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Friday, March 31, 2023

The In Sound From Way Out! - Perrey - Kingsley

 

Cosmic Ballad

The In Sound From Way Out!
Electronic Pop Music of The Future created by Perrey-Kingsley
Gershon Kingsley & Jean Jacques Perrey
Vanguard VSD-7922
1966

From the back cover: Jean Jacques Perrey, who set out toaster the machines that threatened to be the masters of men, was born in 1929 in the North of France. From his early childhood he showed a strong passion for science and music. He was to be a doctor, but music had the greater gravitational pull, and he finally devoted himself to electronic music. Then during a trip to the United States in 1965, he met Gershon Kingsley. The two felt an immediate magnetic attraction, missing out of their common interest in how music and electronics could add to the joy of life.

Gershon Kingsley has many musical trades and is a master of all of them. Having studied at the Los Angeles conservatory, Columbia University and the Juilliard School of Music, he is a band of wide culture and a fitted composer of classical music. He is also a respect figure on Broadway, as arranger and conductor of La Plume de mon tante, Fly Blackbird, and The Cradle Will Rock revival. He has done the arrangements for many notable Vanguard albums, ranging from Netania Davrath's New Songs Of The Auvergne and Jan Peerce's Neapolitan Serenade to the hilarious, Swinging Mozart After Hours.

Kingsley and Perrey decided to pool their talents to produce a record of electronic musical joy and wit. Kingsley had long had the idea of "bringing electronic music to the public." Perrey wanted "to take the mystery out of the legend that says electronic music is an art that is esoteric, exclusively reserved for a few initiates, an elite of avant-garde intellectuals and artist." he added, "I think that for some years electronic music has been going up a one-way street." Both he and Kingsley agree that "it deserves to be raised to the level a popular music, a music designed for fun and relaxation." And so Vanguard Records set up a laboratory in New York for the Perrey-Kingsley experimental researches.

In this laboratory, anew process was created which Perrey calls "Electronic Sono-syntheses." To produce these syntheses they use not only musical instruments from electronic sources (Jenny Ondioline, Martenot Waves, etc.) but also sounds of natural origin (i.e. mystique concréte). These sounds were modified, transited, transformed, to the point of changing their harmonic structure, making out of them new, unprecedented original sonorities. Each sound thus created was then pre-recorded on tape, classified, catalogued by frequency, timber and "tendency." At the time of composing the "musical phrase," each sound was "isolated" and selected according to its nature. The sonorities were then painstakingly assembled by splicing each bit of tape together manually with micrometry precision to form the "melodic line" and/or the rhythmic structure of the piece chosen.

The synthetic rhythmic-melodic tape track thus created was then carefully synchronized with music played by live musicians on both electronic and natural instruments as well as with electronic sounds produced by oscillators, tone generators and feedback loops. Finally, through a complicated process of intricate overdubbing, the lies of which we believe have never before been done to this extent on records, a multi-channel tape master was produced embodying a synthesis of all electronic and natural elements.

A lot of patience was required, for what is heard on this record represents the intricately condensed and selected product of 275 hours of work in the laboratory, and the use of several miles of magnetic tape. As for the tools used in this delicate operation, they were several tape recorders turning at exactly the same speed, an 18 channel mixer, the prerecorded tapes, splicing tape and – we hate to say this after the preceding highly technical buildup – a plain, ordinary pari of scissors. But it must be also admitted that the most important tool was one that has been operating in human affairs even before the scissors, and will continue to operate when we are far out in the space age; namely, the imagination.

From Billboard, November 5, 1966: This recording of electronic pop music created by Gershon Kingsley and Jean Jacques Perrey is so far out it may become in.Adventuresome deejays can have a ball with some of these surprisingly danceable, melodic contrivances like "Swan's Splashdown (Swan Lake)," "Countdown At 6 (Dance Of The Hours)." "The Little Man From Mars,""Electronic Can-Can," "Visa To The Stars," etc.

Unidentified Flying Object
The Little Man From Mars
Cosmic Ballad
Swan's Splashdown
Countdown at 6 Barnyard Orbit
Spooks In Space
Girl From Venus
Electronic Can-Can
Jungle Blues From Jupiter
Computer In Love
Visa To The Stars

Thursday, March 30, 2023

36 Dance Favorites In Hi-Fi - Geraldo

 

Side 2 Band 3

Dance Dance Dance!
36 Dance Favorites In Hi-Fi
Geraldo and His Orchestra
RCA Camden CAS-442
1958

From the back cover: The widely herald and frequently demonstrated theory that one society
band sounds like every other society band gets a severe jolt in the work of Geraldo and his Orchestra. For here is a society band that is different.

For on thing, Geraldo's milieu is not Partk Avenue but London's West End. He is an English bandleader who has been around for a long time covering a wide ranger of territory. Back in the Thirties, when dance bands had the "name" quality that is now usually reserved for popular singers, Geraldo led one of England's great name dance bands – a band which rated with such internationally famous English bands as those led by Ray Noble, Jack Halton and Bert Ambrose, and with the equally worthy but more locally renowned bands of Carroll Gibbons and Roy Fox.

At the same time, Geraldo's was one of London society's favorite bands. When the present Duke of Windsor was still the playboy Prince of Wales, Geraldo was, more often that not, themas who provided the musical background for his merriment. Geraldo established himself as a society laborite while he was still a popular favorite, so that when the popular demand for name dance bands wanted he was in a position to move firmly and securely along the society trail that he had already charted.  The extent and solidity of his reign as England's great society bandleader is emphasized by the fact that his band played for King George V in 1933 and it also played for Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip in 1955.

Because his background has been broad and has not been limited to the routine demands put on the usual society bands, Geraldo's approach is one that is personal and different from that of the society bands we are accustomed to hearing in this country. He bows to an occasional hallmark of the society band – the more-or-less continuous music through ling medleys and, in moderation, that brisk tempo which is sometimes referred to as "boom-chick."

But it is right here that we begin to discern a difference in Geraldo's work. WWHere the routine soicety band forces everything into a Procrustean "boom-chick" gallop, Geraldo varies his tempos to bring out the full musical values of the tunes he is playing and to provide a welcome balance and pace to his programming.

The typically brisk society band tempo serves as a sprightly introduction and finale, so Geraldo appropriately uses it in both his first and last medley here. But even then there is no mechanical backing out of the tunes, but a carefully arranged kaleidoscopically shifting pattern of solo instruments and ensembles which provides the variety that escapes many society bands. If you have ever wondered what became of the old swing bands, you will find some evidence of a swing band in disguise in the way Geraldo's band plays the arrangements that he and his staff arranger, Pete Moore, have written. The interweaving of soloists, thrice and swinging reed ensembles and the smoothly persuasive beat are all vestigial descendants of the style that made the swing bands popular.

But there is more to Geraldo's unique position in the society band field that this. Notice the unusually slow (for a society band) tempo that Geraldo uses on Medley three, and the effective manner in which he does the practical unheard-of thing (for a society band) of turning the tunes in the medley over to single soloists – and note particularly the lovely results he gets from this use of the alto saxophone in Jerome Kern's Dearly beloved. And notice the consistently imaginative writing that has gone into al the medleys, and especially the ingenious way in which Geraldo and Pete Moore have pitted the combination of flute and bass clarinet angst deep, gruff-voiced trombones on Cole Porter's It's Delivery, which opens the first medley on the second side. And notice also that when Geraldo takes up the expected waltz medley, this variety-minded leader manages to give ua a capsule demonstration of three different and valid ways to play a waltz – the polished stateliness he give to Franz Lehár's The Merry Widow Waltz. the simple but haunting solo trumpet interpretation of Richard Rodger's Falling In Love With Love, and the lilting, harp-induced sparkle that is so appropriate to The Blue Danube Waltz.

The tunes, of course are – as they should be – from that seemingly bottomless bag of musical show melody in which the names of Kern, Rodgers, Porter and Gershwin appear almost automatically. Geraldo also has near for the bright, happy-go-lucky tunes that Buddy De Sylva, Lew Brown and Ray Henderson were contributing to Broadway revues in the late Twenties, and he has, happily, included three of them – Button Up You Overcoat, The Best Things In Life Are Free and You're The Cream In My Coffee. And he has not forgotten two of England's most brilliant contributors to this special bag of melody – Noel Coward Dance Little Lady) and Ivor Novello (We'll Gather Lilacs).

Geraldo dresses up these tunes in the suave, sensitively swinging style that has been inspiring dancers in love, lovers of the dance, royal bloods and young blood for more than a water of a century.

Dance Little Lady; All The Things You Are; Button Up Your Overcoat; The Way You Look Tonight: The Lady Is A Tramp
The Merry Widow Waltz; Falling In Love With Love; The Blue Danube Waltz; Long Ago (And Far Away); Dearly Beloved; You Were Never Lovelier: Love Walked In
Nice Work If You Can Get It; The Best Things In Life Are Free; Shall We Dance; A Fine Romance; You're The Cream In My Coffee

It's Delivery; Easy To Love; I Won't Dance; I Love Paris; In The Still Of The Night
Lovely To Look At; We'll Gather Lilacs; Can I Forget You; There's A Small Hotel
Carioca; Cherry Pink Mambo, April In Portugal; Mu Cha Cha; My Heart Belongs To Daddy
The World Is Waiting For The Sunrise; Why Do I Love You; I'm Old Fashioned; On Your Toes; You'd Be So Nice To Come Home To

The Best Of The Stanley Brothers

 

Little Maggie

The Best Of The Stanley Brothers
Starday STEREO SLP-953
Gusto Records, Inc. - Nashville, Tennessee 
1975

Rank Stranger
It's Raining Here This Morning
Little Maggie
Sweeter Than The Flowers
The Master's Bouquet
How Far To Little Rock
Shackles And Chains
Sunny Side Of The Mountain
Wildwood Flower

Wednesday, March 29, 2023

Dave Brubeck: The Light In The Wilderness

 

Forty Days

Dave Brubeck: 
The Light In The Wilderness 
An Oratorio For Today
Text adapted from the Scriptures by Dave and Iola Brubeck
Erich Kunzel Conducting The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra
Dave Brubeck - Piano (Dave Burbeck appears through the courtesy of Columbia Records)
William Justus - Bariton
Gerre Hancock - Organ
Miami University A Cappella Singers
George Barron - Director
Frank Proto - String Bass and Del Rhuba
David Frerichs - Jazz Drums and Tablas
Produced by Israel Horowitz
Decca Records DXSA 7202
1968

From the inside cover: While meeting with Erich Kunzel in the summer of 1967 to discuss a fall pops concert, Dave Brubeck shoed him the score for "The Light In The Wilderness," which was an attempt to distill his thoughts on the universality of Christ's teachings. Excited by the music, Kunzel urged Brubeck to orchestrate it and suggested a premiere in Cincinnati under the auspices of the religious community.

"The Light in the Wilderness" was given its World Premiere by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra at its second annual Ecumenical Concert, February 29, 1968. A sell-out audience of over 3,700, which included critics from across the United States, enthusiastically hailed the oratorio. Repeat concerts ere given at the Orchestra's subscription concerts March 15 and 16 and at Miami University March 17. Decca recorded the work March 19 and 20.

___

Dave Burbeck was born in Concord, California in 1920 and raised in Ione, where his father managed a cattle ranch. Youngest of three brothers, he seemed destined for life on the ranch. Thanks, however, to the insistence of their mother – a piano teacher – that they get a basic musical education, all three Brubeck brothers have made their mark in music: Henry, as supervisor of music education in the Santa Barbara school system; Howard, Dean of Humanities at Palomar College, as composer and conductor; Dave, of course, as jazz pianist, composer and leader.

Graduating in 1942 from College of the Pacific, where he had switched from veterinary medicine to music shortly after enrolling, Dave began private studies with Darius Milhaud until World War II intervened. After Army service in both the U.S. and Urpe, he resumed studies in 1946 at Mills College, Oakland, with Milhaud.

Encouraged by his teacher to play jazz, Dave organized both a trio and an experimental octet and slowly built a following among Bay Area fans before being "discovered"simultaneously by disc jockey Jimmy Lyons and pianist Marie Choppin, both of KNBC, San Francisco. The rest, as the say, is history.

Throughout both formative and securely established years as a giant among jazz musicians, Dave had always the desire to compose extended, large-scale works as well. In later years, anxious to spend more time with his wife and six children at home in Wilton, Conn., he began reducing each year the number of appearances by the Brubeck Quartet. Finally, he made official what close followers had anticipated for some time: the quartet would disband at the close of 1967.

When jazz is in a man's blood, both as pianist-leader and as composer of more than 200 works, he does not simply shut off the flow. Dave Brubeck will continue tomato occasional appearances as jazz combo leader, with emphasis on the word occasional. He fully intends to be a serious composer, developing ideas he has nursed for years. The Light In The Wilderness – perhaps a prophetic title – is his first step in the direction. There will be many more.

Erich Kunzel has been associate conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra since October, 1965. His first concert there featured the Dave Brubeck Quartet; a musical friendship which began then has since produced the premiere, and now the recording of this work. (Mr. Kunzel's first with the Cincinnati orchestra), and other collaborations are now underway. Other jazz artists, incidentally, who have appeared under Mr. Kunzel's baton include Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, Lionel Hampton, Erroll Garner, and Sergio Mendes.

Born in New York in 1935 and raised in Greenwich, Conn., Mr. Kunzel began the study of music at age 10, and was riding arrangements and conducting his own dance band, orchestra, and light opera company by his teens. He began formal study of conducting in 1956 with the late Pierre Monteux and continued until Le Maire's death in 1964, serving also as personal assistant on Monteux's final tours of the U.S. andEurope. Today, Mr. Kunzel serves as vice-president of the Pierre Monte Memorial Foundation. He is a member of the faculty of theUniverityh of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, and music director of the school's Philharmonia Orchestra.

William Justus studied voice in Kansas City, Mo., where he made his professional debut in 1962 with the Kansas City Lyric Opera as Figaro in Rossin's The Barber Of Seville. In 1963 he won the American Opera Auditions and was awarded a contract in Milan, where he made his debut as Scapria in Tosca. Mr. Justus has since become leading baritone with opera companies in West Berlin, Zurich, Dusseldorf, and Santa Fe, performing under the baton of Mr. Kunzel at Santa Fe.

Miami University A Cappella Singers, a 100-voice mixed chorus was founded in 1938 and has repeatedly distinguished itself in performances with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra in both Music Hall and on the Oxford, Ohio, campus. The chorus has been directed since 1952 by George Barron, Dean of the School Fine Arts at Miami University.

Gerre Hancock has been organist and choir director of Cincinnati's Christ Church since 1965. He appears frequently as soloist with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, and is a member of the artist faculty of the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music.

Frank Proto, a graduate of Manhattan School of Music, plays piano and harpsichord as well as bass. He is music director of the unique Symphony Jazz Quintet, comprised of Cincinnati Symphony musicians, and has written a number of original works for the group.

David Frerichs, a graduate of Curtis Institute of Music, serves as percussionist for the Symphony Jazz Quintet as well as the Cincinnati Symphony. He has accompanied pianist Duke Ellington and Erroll Garner in their concert appearances with the Cincinnati Symphony.

From Billboard - September 28, 1968: Brubeck Oratorio to Make Bow in Decca

Dave Brubeck's oratori "The Light in the Wilderness" is being issued by Decca Records, the work's premiere recording. The two-record set, one of fie Decca titles this month, features the same forces who performed the oratorio's world premiere with the Cincinnati Symphony in February.

In addition to the Cincinnati, Erich Kunzel conducts the Miami (Ohio) University A Capella Singers, baritone William Justus, and an organ and jazz combo featuring Brubeck. The same artists will perform the "The Light in the Wilderness: at Philharmonic Hall here in April before taking it on a European tour.

The Washington National Symphony plus a 350 - voice chorus will perform the work in Washington's National Cathedral in February. Later in the spring, the oratorio will be given by the Indianapolis Symphony and the Dayton Symphony. 

Brubeck's 12-part composition, which has text adapted from the Bible, alternated advance classical writing with jazz, elements of rock and Eastern music. The oratory deals with love, peace and brotherhood.

The Temptations
Forty Days
The Sermon On The Mount
The Great Commandments 
Love Your Enemies
Interlude
What Does It Profit A Man?
Yet A Little While
Praise Ye The Lord

Down There On The Ground - Wes Montgomery

 

Goin' On To Detroit

Wes Montgomery:
Down Here On The Ground
Arranged and Conducted by Don Sebesky and Emir Deodato
Produced by Creed Taylor / CTI
Cover Photographs by Pete Turner
Album Design by Sam Antupit
A&M Records  STEREO A&M SP 3006
1968

Guitar - Wes Montgomery
Bass - Ron Carter
Drums - Grady Tate
Piano - Herbie Hancock (Herbie Hancock appears through the courtesy of Blue Note Records)
Percussion - Bobby Rosengarden & Ray Barretto
Vibes - Mike Mainieri
Violins - Gene Orloff & Raoul Polliakin
Cello - George Ricci
Viola - Emanuel Vardi
Flutes & Oboe - Herbert Laws (Herbert Laws appears through the courtesy of Atlantic Records), George Marge & Romeo Penque

Wind Song
Georgia On My Mind
The Other Man's Grass Is Always Greener
Down Here On The Ground
Up And At It
Goin' On To Detroit
I Say A Little Prayer
When I Look In Your Eyes
Know It All
The Fox

Lovier Then Ever - The Ray Charles Singers

 

June In January

Lovelier Than Ever
The Ray Charles Singers
A&R Coordinator: Ira Stimler
Cover Photo: Murray Laden
Director of Engineering: Val Valentin
Metro Records M-562
1965

Spring Will Be A Little Late This Year
Lovelier Than Ever
My Darling, My Darling
Suddenly It's Spring 
June In January
Will We Always Be Sweethearts?
Mademoiselle De Paree
The Things We Did Last Summer
You're My Girl
I'll Remember April



Tuesday, March 28, 2023

Lee Konitz Plays With the Gerry Mulligan Quartet

 

Lover Man

Lee Konitz Plays With The Gerry Mulligan Quartet 
A Richard Bock Production
Cover Design by Armond Acosta
Photographs (during the recording session at the Haig, Los Angeles, in January 1953) by William Clayton
World Pacific Records WP-1273
1957

From the back cover: The proper study of jazz is jazzmen. Not only because improvisation is concentrated personal revelation but also because men who detest and shun each other have made thrilling music together whilst others who golf, goof, gamble and gambol together produce music that sounds like the weary waiter's endless mumbling of a morbid menu in that dim restaurant in Hell reserved fro those who squirt tomato ketchup on matzoh balls.

Some excellent records have been made by jazzmen who admire and respect each other. But there are instances, too, where disparate personalities rubbed each other so much that wrong way that a crackling blaze of heart-warming jazz resulted from the excessive friction between them. This is true most notable in some of the Armstrong-Bechet recordings – it is no secret that intense rivalry is the mildest label one can hang on the feeling in the recording studios between Louis and Sidney – and in the constant battle of nerves between Lester Young andHershel Evans that kept a good part of the Basie orchestra in a state of creative tension. A brisling bunch of morose thorns trying to blow each other, and the drummer,  off a bandstand is by no means exceptional experience. Attempts to market this condition, that is to build it up artificially as a "battle of the saxes," "Battle of the trumpets," "Battle of the bands," etcetera and ad nauseam, most often wind up as a duel of belching honks and spine-stiffening screeches at five paces, the purposeful intention being that of any self-respecting demolition squad.

Stimulation of his colleagues by consistent application of his peregrine personality is very likely the most wicked weapon in Gerry Mulligan's deadly arsenal. He has played probably in front of more gourds than lingered on in a recurring state of instant disintegration behind him that any other major jazzman. Not that Gerry plans it that way; he just seems mohave been possessed rather frequently of or by an impish natural talent for annoying others to an extent that is much more often productive than destructive.

How this quality operated in his work with Lee Konitz I have no way of knowing but I believe, after hearing this record, that someone constructed a small conflagration under Lee when he sat in with Gerry's quartet at the Haig in Los Angeles on the night of January 25, 1953. And since that expert at artistic arson, Gerry Mulligan, was present I think we may have solved this minor mystery.

Certainly, the Konitz four-alarm romp through "All Things You Are" and "I'll Remember April," both of which have been stocked safely in Richard Bock's fireproof vaults for almost five years, suggests Lee caught fire that night.

These two tracks apart, the other eight items have already gone round the world. Their international fame first hit me when I was on the all-night United Press news desk in Paris in 1955. Of the many Mulligan fans I have known, one of the most fervent was a young teletype operator on my shift named Arabian (pronounced Ah-rahb-yan). He used to delight me, amid the din of some thirty chattering teletypes, by singing note-for-note choruses from Gerry's records. One night, before I had heard it, Arabian ripped off Lee's chorus on "Too Marvelous For Words."

"Qu'est-ce'que'c'est-ca?" I asked him. "C'est Gerry?"

"Mais, non," said Arabian, grinning happily at having caught me out, "chest Koohneetz."

"Qui?"

"Koohneetz, mon vieux, I'altosaxist le plus formidable du monde."

And Arabian never puts tomato ketchup on anything. 

– Daniel Halperin - Mr. Halperin, a Canadian, went to Europe in 1950 and joined the staff of the late Continental Daily Mail in Paris and was later a United Press Staff Correspondent in Paris. He is now assistant Art Editor of the Daily Sketch in London.

I Can't Believe That You're In Love With Me
Broadway
Almost Like Being In Love
Sextet
Lady Be Good
Too Marvelous
Lover Man
I'll Remember April
These Foolish Things
All The Things You Are

This Is My Beloved - Alfred Ryder

 

This Is My Beloved

This Is My Beloved
Narration by Alfred Ryder
From The Book by Walter Benton
Published by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
Original Musical Score by Vernon Duke
Orchestra & Chorus Conducted by Lehman Engel
Recording Engineer: Tom Dowd
Cover: Bill Hughes
Supervision: Herbert Abramson
Atlantic 1252
1956

From the back cover: The Narrator

Alfred Ryder mad his debut as a child actor in Eva Le Gallienne's production of Peter Pan. He has since been performing in one theatrical medium or another. He has also taught acting, and has directed several plays. Six years ago he toured the country as Hamlet with the Margaret Webster Shakespeare Company. His Broadway credits include "Orestes" to Judith Anderson's "Clytemnestra" in Tower Beyond Tragedy; "Mark Antony" against the "Cassius" of Basil Rathbone in Julius Caesar' "Oswald" to the aforementioned Miss Le Gallienne's "Mrs. Alving" in Ben's Ghost, and leading roles in such plays as Hello Jack, Away And Sing, All The Living, etc. Alfred Ryder also appeared in the Fourth Street Theatre's production of Uncle Vanya in which he related Franchot Tone in the leading role. He has been seen extensively on the major television shows in parts ranging all the way from Shakespeare to such modern authors as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Arthur Schnitzler.

The Composer 

Distinguished both as popular song writer (Vernon Duke) and classical composer (Vladimir Dukelsky), Vernon Duke was born in Russia in 1903. When he arrived here in 1929, he was already renowned in Europe as a composer. His music for the Diaghilev ballet Zephyr and Flora, with decor by the great French painter Georges Braque, was a major success on the Continent in the 20's. Among Mr. Dukelsky's accomplishments are three symphonies, four ballets, and concertos for piano, for violin, and for cello. Under the name Vernon Duke – suggested to him by his friend George Gershwin – he has written copiously for the stage. His musical comedy success include the Ziegfeld Follies (1934 and 1935 editions), Cabin In The Sky, Banjo Eyes, Sadie Thompson, Two's Company, etc. He has composed the background music for numerous films, and a flock of song hits are to his credit, including such perennial favorites as April In Paris and I Can't Get Started. All the music for This Is My Belonged was orchestrated by the composer. Mr. Duke has published a fascinating autobiographical account of his musical experience (Passport To Paris; Little, Brown & Co.).

The Conductor

Lehman Engel is well known to music lovers for his work as composer and musical director on records, for the theatre, for radio and for television. Mr. Engel conducts the forth-six choral and instrument musicians, assembled from leading symphonic and choral groups, thought he intricacies of Mr. Duke's score with a profound feeling for the mood and color of the music.

The Author

Walter Benton is Austrian by birth and has lived most of his life in America. He is a graduate of Ohio University, and he served in the U.S. Army during World War II with the rank of Captain. His work has appeared in Poetry Magazine, Esquire and the Yale Review. His second volume of poems, Never A Greater Need, was published by Knopf in 1948.

Sonic Seasonings - Walter Carlos

 

Winter

Trans-Electronic Music Productions, Inc. Present
Walter Carlos
Sonic Seasonsings
A Tempi Production
Produced by Rachel Elkins
Mixed by Walter Carlos
Mastering: Cliff Morris
Cover Design: Ed Lee
Cover Art: Islands Of Matsushima - accession number: 11.4584 / Fund: Fenollosa / Courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Columbia KG 31234
1972

From the inside cover: Walter Carlos: Then, Now And In-Between

I can't actually remember my first meeting with Walter Carlos., though it must have been late in 1962 at Columbia University in New York where, at the time, we were both graduate students in musical composition. Possibly if occurred in one of those interminable music history lectures through which I used to doze so contentedly, but it escapes me as to whether it was during one of Professor Lang's Baroque fantasies or during a session of Professor Lenin's reminiscences about life with Ferruccio Busoni.

But no matter, it soon became a ritual for us to settle into one of the nearby pubs favored by Columbia stints and to spend hours grombling about fusty academics and arguing about music. Walter loved Hoist's The Planets – I loathed it. I had a strange passion for Miaskovsky's Seventeenth Symphony – Walter could see nothing good in it. Occasionally, we even agreed in our enthusiasms and dislikes: the Bartok string quartets, the Berg Violin Concerto, the Prokofiev piano concertos were splendid, while Richard Strauss' tone-poems, most of Schonberg, and all of Delius, were abominable.

Thought he was also writing music for conventional instruments, Walter's great interest, even then, was the electronic medium. In fact, since his early youth (born 1939 in Pawtucket, Rhode Island) he had displayed a strong concern with both music and scientific technology: at the age of 10, he composed a Trio for Clarinet., Accordion and Piano and, four years later, he designed and constructed a small computer. When he was 17, he achieved a symbiosis between music and science by assembling an electronic music studio and producing there his first electronic composition, which utilized sounds created and manipulated on tape-recorders. As a student at Brown University from 1958-62, Walter studied music and physics, also teaching electronic music at informal sessions. Then, in 1962, he enrolled at Columbia University to work and study at the renowned Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center. Among other activities during this Columbia period (1962-65) was a concert of electronic music at Philharmonic Hall, Lincoln Center, in which he assisted Leonard Bernstein.

One of my most vivid recollection of those years is of countless night session in the Electronic Music Center, and of Walter and myself emerging onto the campus in the early morning, blinking dazedly in the sunlight and staggering across Broadway to the local "Chock Full o' Nuts' for coffee. Vladimir Ussachevsky had kindly allowed  Walter the run of the electronic music laboratory after midnight and it turned out to be a good arrangement for both of us – though I  was illegal. The lab was backstage at McMillin Theater, and while Walter was manically involved with the tape machines, I would invade the stage and commandeer the concert grand piano for composing purposes. There was only one catch to an otherwise ideal situation, and that was the fact that each of us worked in constant dread of marauding janitors who seemed unaware of the Ussachevsky-Carlos compact and had the habit of appearing at unexpected moments to express their considerable outrage at our presence. I recall that the custodial corps was particularly vigilant one night when I recorded Walter's Dialogues for Piano and Two Loudspeakers for commercial release: one take was interrupted by a sudden bellow from the balcony of "Hey, Buddy – what the hell d'ya think you're doin' with that piano?" while still another was graced with a colorful clash of fortissimo brooms and pails. Somehow, we managed.

Now and then, I used to sit amidst the laboratory equipment and, being incorrigibly unscientific, watch and listen to what Walter was up to with more than a little amazement. A distinct feeling of being left out would occasionally inspire taught pronouncements to the effect that michelins must never be allowed to supersede man, especially in the area of musical composition. Poor Walter, looking harried, would counter with lenghty technical explanations as to why the human element remained all-important in the electron medium. His aspiration, even then, was to have a synthesizer at his disposal so versatile as to allow him to perform on it as expressively as, for instance, on a piano. It seemed a far-fetched idea at the to,ebit that. pf course. was in the pre-Moog era when Columbia-Rpinceton's unwieldy RDCA Mark II Synthesizer (which Walter did not have access to anyway) was the most sophisticated device of its kind.

It was natural that Walter should have been attracted to the composition of works for traditional instruments in combination with electronically generate sounds, for he was much disturbed by the fact that a piece  conceived on tape would, of necessity, be exactly the same each time it was played – a total negation of the performance factor. So, besides the previously mentioned Dialogues (1963), he produced Variations for Flute and Electronic Sounds (1964). Episodes for Piano and Tape (1964), and Pomposities for Narrator and Tape (1965). In addition, his opera  Noah (1965) contains sections where electronic sounds augment the conventional orchestra.

Following graduation from Columbia in 1965, Walter spent three years as a recording engineer at Gotham Recording Studios in mid-Manhattan. In 1966, he began a collaboration with engineer Robert Moog, hoping to develop an electronic sound producer that could Bailey be termed a musical instrument. Walter has observed that he desires "to try to maintain a continuity in music. The synthesizer grows out of what went before, just as the piano grew out of the harpsichord." With the completion of the first version of his Moog Syntezier, he began to seek continuity by turning to the music of the past and making arrangements of writs of Johann Sebastian Bach. He chose Bach because he felt that the Moog was capable of bringing an ideal clarity to such intensely linear music.

The rest is history. With the appearance of Walter's Switched-On Bach, in the fall of 1968, audiences around the world were introduced to an entirely new instrument and, as a result, became generally more aware of the electronic music medium. The album itself, hailed as "the record of the decade" by no less a Bach authority than pianist Glenn Gould, achieved the status of one of the best-selling classical records of all time. It was followed, in 1969, by The Well-Tempered Synthesizer, containing more Bach, plus works of Monteverdi, Scarlatti and Handel.

Switched-On Bach's success made it possible for Walter to abandon his tiny Moog-dominated apartment on New York City's West Side and to move into a roomy brownstone. This has been almost completely remodeled, with the basement transformed into a superb 16-track recording studio and perhaps the most elaborate and complete electronic music laboratory anywhere.

In 1971, utilizing his vastly amplified and improved Moog Synthesizer, Water produced a lengthily serious electronic composition entitled Timesteps and also his brilliant score to Stanley Kubrick's film A Clockwork Orange. 1972 has seen the creation off the present album, Sonic Seasonings. For both Clockwork Orange and Sonic Seasonings, Walter had the sensitive collaboration and direction of his long-time producer, Rachel Elkins.

As to future projects, Walter Carlos has, as usual, several ideas joggling for position in his restless mind. And, just as usual, they range from the improbable to the wildly improbable. Or maybe not. Once upon a time, I thought the same about his electronic Bach. And, when he described plans for Sonic Seasonings, I told him that they were amusing to talk about but that the entire concept was quite outlandish. "You'll never actually do it, you know," I declared – perceptively. – Phillip Ramey

___

One of the most fascinating – and least explored  – areas of scientific investigation is that of psychoacoustics, the manner in which the ear and brain interact to sounds. In reality, any sound that we hear is subject to interpretation by our individual experience and the circumstance surrounding that sound. For example, a loud sound will register on the ear as either louder or softer, depending on the sound that precedes and follows it. Similarly, a quiet tone gains in intensity by the degree of loudness surrounding it. When these qualities of sound, or music, are deliberately "mixed" or manipulated, the result can be a fascinating perceptual "illusion" that enriches today's musical palette almost beyond imagination.

All this is simply to explain what SONIC SEASONINGS is all about: It is an aural tapestry, created by the imagination and expertise of Walter Carlos, from impressionistic and expressionistic experiences of Nature. It contains natural sounds, recorded in Quad as realistically as possible and subtly mixed with electronic and instrumental sounds in an effort to creat four evolving, undulating cycles evocative of the moods of earth's seasons. We have manipulated these sounds – electronically orchestrated them, so to speak – into an amalgam of the natural and the synthetic.

To produce this record, an entirely new technique and methodology had to be created. Queipment had to be designed and built, engineering technology had to be developed – we were "winging it" from the first inch of tape to the end. A great deal of what you will hear is illusory: Some sounds appear louder or softer than are measurable end some emanate from directions that are virtually inexplicable by customary "norm" perceptions. While the quadraphonic master is particually an ear-fooler in these  and other ways, Walter conceived a unique system to make the stereo version "almost quad." (in fact, it was frequently impossible for its to believe that we were listening to the stereo version.)

The sounds and music in this album represent, then, a painstaking synchronization, re-ordering, and blending of as many as 48 Dolbyized tracks at a time, and, we hope, suggest a third, viable alternative to acoustic and musical environmental presentations. 

But on the level of pure enjoyment, these records were designed to be a part of the decor, so to speak – a sonic ambience that enhances the listener's total environment. On still another level, SONIC SEASONINGS take the listener out of his environment and into the countryside of his fantasy: The weary urbanite can eavesdrop on the conversation of chattering birds; the mountain dweller can lave his soul with a sound of the surf, and so on.

We ask, however, that the listener supply on element that we could not possibly blend into the final mix – his own imagination and his remembrance of Nature's blessing. – Rachel Elkins.

Spring
Summer
Fall 
Winter

Dixieland Jazz - Space Cadets

 

Loveless Love

Dixieland Jazz
Space Cadets
Promenade Records 2056
1957

Milenburg Joys
St. Louis Blues
Dipper Mouth Blues
Careless Love
When The Saints Go Marching In
St. James Infirmary
Muskrat Ramble
Beal Street
See See Rider
Tiger Rag
Loveless Love
Sol Blues

Monday, March 27, 2023

The Famous Castle Jazz Band In Hi-Fi

 

Farewell Blues

The Famous Castle Jazz Band In Hi-Fi
Cover by Arnold Roth
Produced by Lester Koenig
Recorded August 18, 19 & 20, 1957 at the Good Time Jazz studio in Los Angeles
Sound  by Roy DuNann
Good Time Jazz GTJ L-12030
1958

Monte Ballou - Banjo
Don Kinch - Trumpet
George Bruns - Trombone
Bob Gilbert - Clarinet
Freddie Crews - Piano
Bob Short - Tuba
Homer Welch - Drums

From the back cover: In 1949, When GTJ began operations, there were four traditional jazz bands on the West Coast, each of them in tis own way, unusual, to say the least. In Los Angeles, Kid Cry had made his remarkable comeback with his Creole Jazz Band, and the newly organized and spectacularly popular Firehouse Five Plus Two were also livening things up. The group which began the great world-wide traditional revival of the 1940's, Lu Watters' Yerba Buena Jazz Band, with Turk Murphy and Bob Scobey, were at Hambone Kelly's across the bay from San Francisco, in El Cerrito. And, in Portland, Oregon was the talented gourd of jazz lovers, amateurs de jazz, as the French say, who called themselves the "Castle Jazz Band." These groups, despite their many differences, had several things in common: they believed in the New Orleans style of ensemble improvisation; they sued the repertoire of tunes developed  by King Oliver, Jelly Roll Morton, and in Ory's case by himself, plus ragtime classics; and they were characterized by a happy, spontaneous, "good time" feeling.

The Castle Jazz Band was a cooperative venture, with Monte Ballou as leader. Part of the enterprise was a record label, Castle Records, which they organized to document their doings. Under the stewardship of Harry Fosbury, during their two most active years, 1949 - 50, the band produced a series of ten-inch 78 rpm records which delighted collectors. Unfortunately, these sides never achieved the wide distribution they deserved, and because of the limited technical facilities available, were not of suitable quality for release on Long-playing records. When GTJ discard the original members of the hand were still around, it was decided to reassemble them and re-records twelve of the best sides that had down originally with the benefit of the ultimate in today's hi-fi techniques.

The evening of Sunday, August 18, 1957, the band began arriving at GTJ's studio in Los Angeles. The Ebullient Monte Ballou flew in his Thunderbird, stopping at San Francisco to pick up pianist Freddie Crews, Bob Short, his tuba, and his photographer wire. Shorty, arrived from Las Vegas in a Panhard. Drummer Homer Welch, trombonist George Bruns, and trumpeter Don Kinch had migrated to Los Angeles some years before, and were on hand to greet their visiting colleagues. After a half hour or so of hand-shaking, convivial drinking and much laughter, Ballou kicked off the tempo Kansas City Stomps, and the Castle Jazz Band was playing again to end a seven year hiatus. From the first few bars it was apparent that they'd lost none of their remarkable group feeling and spirit. If anything, intervening years had served to give them more assurance, and a more thorough mastery of their instruments. The session proved to be, as Ballou said, "The most fun we've had in years!"

The unusual quality of the band is derived from the personalities of the musicians who comprise it. Monte Ballou, banjoist, vocalist and leader, is an entertainer who, for many years, has made his living playing at sales meetings, conventions, political rallies, and other varied gatherings, singing lyrics which he improvises from sketchy facts given on the job. He calls it a "calypso type" improvisation, although the music is unrelated to the calypso style. "I have sung," he notes, "to and about Toeernors, Mayors, Presidents of corporations, Senators, hoods, actors, brokers, bankers, salesmen, musicians, and I have sung about pin-ball machines, automobiles, taxes, sex, psychiatry, cosmetics, bread beer baseball, nuclear fusion, foreign aid, etc., etc." He was born July 21, 1902, in Waterport, New York, moved to Uniontown, Pennsylvania as a boy, and in 1911 to Portland. In 1916 he learned to play the mandolin, and picked up the ukulele the next year. Shortly after the first wWorld War he bang listening to records by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band and by Bert Williams. He began polishing banjo and soon got a job with "Fletcher's Harmony Four – A Good Seven Piece Orchestra." A series of jobs followed. Chinese restaurants, hotels, ballroom, roadhouses, cabarets private parties in Oregon and on the road. He worked as a banjoist until 1932 when he switched to guitar. By the late 1930s he was singing and acting as a night club master of ceremonies. Jazz was an avocation, indulged in mostly via record collecting. He became internationally famous among collectors as the possessor of the only extant copy of King Oliver's Zulu Ball. In 1948, in Portland, he organized a band with the same personnel heard on the present album, later to be known as the "Castle Jazz Band," but originally a "spasm" band which played for two hours each Sunday at the Portland amusement park. "We strolled as Hawaiians, Keystone Ops, hillbillies and Spaniards," Ballou recalls.

Following their successful Dixieland Jubilee appearance of '49 the Castle Jam Band opened its own club. In 1951, after the cooperative dissolved, Ballou opened a second club in Portland, with a new band which included Bob Gilbert, Freddie Crews and Bob Short. In 1954, Ballou sold the club and joined Doc Evans' band for a mid-West tour. In 1955 he joined Turk Murphy's band for a while, then returned to Portland. Currently Ballou continues his unique occupation as singing improviser, and in addition has a jazz band (Gilbert is still with him) at Rosini's two nights a week, plus casuals in the area.

Don Kinch was born May 14, 1917 in Kelso, Washington. He lived in Souther California in his teens, graduating from High School in San Diego to the life of a professional  dance band musician, including his long-time friend, George Burns. When musical jobs were scarce, both he and Bruns worked in a variety of skilled non-musical jobs – in shipyards, steel mills and as carpenters. After leaving Balou in 1950, he and Bruns joined Turk Murphy's Band for two years. In the mid-1950s he began doing a great deal of work on both trumpet and string bass at Disney (the Micky Mouse Club) and other studios. In 1958 he took up tuba to play with the Firehouse Five Plus Two. Since the FH5, of course, is a part-time activity, he also plays cornet (he recently switched from trumpet) with other Los Angeles jazz groups. 

George Bruns was born July 3, 1914 at Sandy, Oregon, and has been a professional musician all his life. He plays trumpet, trombone, clarinet, piano, string bass, tuba and drums. During the period of the Castle Jazz Band's greatest activity he was musical director of Portland's station KEX. He played trombone with the Castle group; when he left in 1950 and joined Turk Murphy, he played tuba and string bass. In 1952 he and his wife, singer Jeanne Gayle, had a night club act in which he was featured on all the instruments. In 1953 he worked at UPA, the cartoon studio in Hollywood, composing and conducting film scores, and in 1954 went to  work for Walt Disney, where he has since composed music for a host of Disney feature films (he wrote the sensation hit, The Ballad Of Davy Crockett). TV programs (he did all three of Ward Kimball's award-winning space shows), and cartoon subjects. He is regarded as one of the best film composers in Hollywood, but devote his many activities still finds time to play jazz with various local groups, including the Firehouse Five for whom, since he plays all the instruments, he acts as chief substitute.

Bob Gilbert was born September 14, 1922 in Coos Bay, Oregon. He grew up in Portland, stared playing clarinet in grade school and played in his high school band, and various local dance and jazz groups. He was a B-17 pilot in World War II, after which he joined the General Electric Company. He ask been with GE for the past twelve years, currently in Portland as Advertising & Sale Promotion Specialist. During the years he has continued to play jazz for kicks, mostly with Monte Ballou and the Castle groups. In 1952-53 he was sent by GE to Schenectady, New York, and while there plays for a year with trumpeter Rex Stewart. He is still with Ballou, playing at Rosini's two nights a week.

Freddie Crews was born in Seattle April 16, 1922, grew up in the Pacific Northwest, and has worked pjrofeeionaly in a number of clubs in Washington and Idaho. His interest in jazz became active in 1946 when he met Bob Short in Portland, and heard many of the old jazz records Short owned. He became especially interest in the work of Jelly Roll Morton and the ragtime players, and hs since improved a number of rags. Hi joined the Castle band at the time they opened his club, and remained with Ballou after the original Castle group disbanded. In 1953 he moved to San Francisco, and a job with Turk Murphy. Subsequently he worked in the Bay Area as a single, and is currently at both the Honeybucker and the Sail 'N in San Francisco.

Bob Short was born August 26, 1911 in Kirksville, Missouri, got his first cornet at the age of eight, took lessons and played in a Sunday school orchestra. His high school bandmaster persuaded him to learn the tuba, and he began playin ti professionally in 1928. He had moved to Los Angeles, and worked speakeasies, lodge picnics, both swing and sweet dance bands, plus some time in the Los Angeles burlesque theaters. During World War II Short served aboard an aircraft carrier. He was discharge in 1945 and began laying in various jazz groups. Red Fox in Los Angeles, Jack Teagarden in Portland, four years with Ballou and the Castle Jazz Band, several years playing both tuba and cornet with Turk Murphy form 1952, and a stretch with Bob Scobey. In June 1958, he had his own five piece group at the Sail ' N in San Francisco. Short's hobby is flying and he has operated his own flying school.

Homer Welch was born December 30, 1912 in Portland, and began playing drums when he was ten. He played in both high school and college orchestras, but music has always been his avocation. His main activities have been in radio. He was program director a KGW, Portland's NBC outlet, president of the local Press Club, active in many other community groups, and had played with a local Portland dance band for a number of years until 1945 when he quit music. Ballou persuaded him to unpack his drums in 1948 when the Castle Jazz Band was organized, and Welch remains with them until 1951 when he moved to Hollywood to work as a producer-director for NBC radio. He now works in advertising and radio in Dan Francisco.

From the time if its inception the Castle Jazz Band was enthusiastically received by jazz fans and critic. Writing in The Record Changer for May, 1949, George Avakian said the State of Oregon was a "better place to live" because of them. "The mob has a hell of a good time," Avakain concluded, "and turns out some fine music in the process." And in he Record Changer review of the Los Angeles Dixieland Jubilee of October 1949, Jack Lewerke wrote, "The band has an enthusiasm that was transmitted to the audience, and no other group during the entire evening seems to have the power to once again bring that audience enthusiasm back to the same level." Listening to this album is not difficult to see why they were so popular. The fact that jazz was an avocation gave the group an exuberant and enthusiastic quality; but is members' divergent main interests also made it impossible for them to continue as band. Thus, this album is the only available record of one of the very best tradition jazz outfits of the revival period. – Lester Koenig - June 22, 1958

Sweet Georgia Brown
Royal Garden Blues
I've Been Floating Down The Old Green River
At A Georgia Camp Meeting
Carless Love
Tiger Rag
Dippermouth Blues 
Smoky Movies
Kansas City Stomps
The Torch
Ory's Creole Trombone
Farewell Blues