Miles Davis' Kind of Blue

by Len Hart

Why play so many notes instead of just choosing the most beautiful? --Miles Davis

Jazz historians know this date: April 22, 1959, the date on which Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Julian "Cannonball" Adderly, Bill Evans, Wynton Kelly, and James Cobb recorded the watershed Kind of Blue album. Words like "watershed", "milestone" or even "seminal" are often used to describe this LP, remembered for Miles' efforts to loosen the "harmonic strictures on Jazz improvisation". Prior to Kind of Blue, musicians improvised within specific chord sequences. Kind of Blue shifted the paradigm with free improvisations based upon 'modes' i.e, scale sequences.

Prior to Kind of Blue, Miles had already voiced his displeasure with bebop's seeming dependence on increasingly complex chord structures. The musical underpinnings of five pieces on Kind of Blue are modes or scales --not complex chord patterns. It was not entirely revolutionary. Modes had been used extensively before the baroque and classical eras and more recently by composer Ralph Vaughn Williams.

Miles was convinced that 'modal improvisation" might liberate jazz which he believed had become increasingly 'thick'. Indeed --Kind of Blue immediately impresses with the elegant simplicity of its style and the fresh transparency of its delightful harmonic inventions.

That this CD represents yet another re-issue of this landmark recording is appropriate when a renewed interest in jazz is especially keen. There are, of course, many fans who never left this uniquely American art form. Yet, as Rock N' Roll and the subsequent British Invasion swept up the counter-culture that birthed modern jazz in its inception, jazz very nearly lost its pre-imminent voice among that larger audience.

It is not just that the technical problems which beset earlier releases of Kind of Blue have been admirably solved and addressed in this CD, it is a recording to "come back" to. As in live sessions and in the original recording sessions, Miles' phrasings are full-throated (not tinny or off-key) and spontaneously brilliant in the absolute richness of the musical ideas they represent. Likewise, Coltrane and Adderly dazzle us with seemingly infinite improvisational motifs seamless in their gestaltic wholeness.

Then there is Bill Evans! What can be said of such genius and virtuosity that his notes are precisely "right" yet never fail to delight or surprise?

If you are one of those who momentarily left jazz, come back to this CD. Listen yet again for the first time. At a time when Rock is sounding somewhat tired and long in the tooth, Miles and crew have never sounded fresher or newer.

So What by Miles Davis from 'Kind of Blue'

More Davis et al from Kind of Blue

Kind of Blue from a TV Broadcast

Subscribe

Add to Google

Betty Boop: Wonderland Jig Saw Puzzle

by Len Hart

The famous (or infamous) animated character, Betty Boop, was created by Max Fleischer and made her first appearance in the Talkartoon film series produced by Fleischer studios and released by Paramount. She has also been featured in comic strips and mass merchandising.

She was actually 'toned down' during the mid-1930s, an apparent effort to make her more demure. Even so, she became one of the most well-known and popular cartoon characters.

Betty Boop made her first appearance on August 9, 1930, in the cartoon Dizzy Dishes;[5] the sixth installment in Fleischer's Talkartoon series. Although Clara Bow is often given as being the model for Boop,[7] she actually began as a caricature of singer Helen Kane.[8] The character was originally created as an anthropomorphic French poodle.

Max Fleischer finalized Betty Boop as a human character in 1932, in the cartoon Any Rags. Her floppy poodle ears became hoop earrings, and her black poodle nose became a girl's button-like nose. Betty Boop appeared as a supporting character in 10 cartoons as a flapper girl with more heart than brains. In individual cartoons, she was called "Nancy Lee" or "Nan McGrew" – derived from the 1930 Helen Kane film Dangerous Nan McGrew – usually serving as a girlfriend to studio star, Bimbo.

LikeTelevision Watch Movies and TV Shows
Betty Boop in Wonderland

Subscribe

Add to Google

Popeye Makes a Movie

'Popeye Makes a Movie' dates to 1950. Popeye and Olive prepare to make a movie and the nephews get to watch and learn how movies are made. This movie is a part of the longer 'Popeye the Sailor Meets Ali Baba's Forty Thieves' of 1937 which makes up some 80% of this release.

It includes the beginning in which Popeye and Olive are suffering from heat and lack of water in the desert. The nephews are involved at key plot points, primarily by tossing Popeye his spinach when he needs it most.

Popeye Makes a Movie

Add to Google

Sydney Poiter Reads Plato's 'The Allegory of the Cave'

by Len Hart

When Poitier's interpretation of classic passages by Plato were released, JFK had been recently assassinated in Dallas, the United States was bogged down in Viet Nam, Berlin was divided, the world had devolved into two incompatible spheres --a 'west of the wall' and an 'east of the wall'. A generation protested the U.S. presence in Viet Nam; a Civil Rights Movement demanded of an establishment: '...let our people go!" We sought to leave the cave! We sought to 'behold the light'.

The son of a wealthy and noble family, Plato (427-347 B.C.) was preparing for a career in politics when the trial and eventual execution of Socrates (399 B.C.) changed the course of his life. He abandoned his political career and turned to philosophy, opening a school on the outskirts of Athens dedicated to the Socratic search for wisdom. Plato's school, then known as the Academy, was the first university in western history and operated from 387 B.C. until A.D. 529, when it was closed by Justinian.

Unlike his mentor Socrates, Plato was both a writer and a teacher. His writings are in the form of dialogues, with Socrates as the principal speaker. In the Allegory of the Cave, Plato described symbolically the predicament in which mankind finds itself and proposes a way of salvation. The Allegory presents, in brief form, most of Plato's major philosophical assumptions: his belief that the world revealed by our senses is not the real world but only a poor copy of it, and that the real world can only be apprehended intellectually; his idea that knowledge cannot be transferred from teacher to student, but rather that education consists in directing student's minds toward what is real and important and allowing them to apprehend it for themselves; his faith that the universe ultimately is good; his conviction that enlightened individuals have an obligation to the rest of society, and that a good society must be one in which the truly wise (the Philosopher-King) are the rulers.

The Allegory of the Cave can be found in Book VII of Plato's best-known work, The Republic, a lengthy dialogue on the nature of justice. Often regarded as a utopian blueprint, The Republic is dedicated toward a discussion of the education required of a Philosopher-King.

The following selection is taken from the Benjamin Jowett translation (Vintage, 1991), pp. 253-261. As you read the Allegory, try to make a mental picture of the cave Plato describes. Better yet, why not draw a picture of it and refer to it as you read the selection. In many ways, understanding Plato's Allegory of the Cave will make your foray into the world of philosophical thought much less burdensome.

--The History Guide, Lectures on Modern European Intellectual History, Plato's 'The Allegory of the Cave'

Sydney Poitier Interprets Plato

Subscribe

Add to Google

Maxwell Anderson: Winterset

by Len Hart

James Maxwell Anderson (15 December 1888 – 28 February 1959) was an American playwright, author, poet, journalist and lyricist. His most famous play --Winterset --is a drama written largely in poetic form. It deals with an American tragedy: the executions of Sacco and Vanzetti, two Italian immigrants whose politics were considered to be 'radical'.

In fact, Ferdinando Nicola Sacco (April 22, 1891–August 23, 1927) and Bartolomeo Vanzetti (June 11, 1888–August 23, 1927) were anarchists --not terrorists. Today, there are few who believe that the charges against them were, in any way, justified. The trial on charges they murdered two men during a bank robbery in South Braintree, Massachusetts is still controversial for what has been called the 'utter lack of evidence' against them. After a controversial trial, a series of appeals, Sacco and Vanzetti were executed August 23, 1927.

There is still a highly politicized dispute over their guilt or innocence. Many believe that the trial were unfair, there was no admissible evidence against them, that much of the evidence was contradictory. There remains no consensus among historians.

The plot of 'Winterset' follows the 'quest' of Mio Romagna to prove his father’s innocence years after Bartolomeo Romagna had been executed for the crimes of robbery and murder. Mio's quest is complicated by his love for Miriamne Esdras and difficult ethical decisions resulting from his connection to her family.

Not surprisingly --'Winterset' is a very political play with 'Shakespearean meditations' on faith, truth, justice, love, and duty. It frequently alludes to the Bard as well as to Judaic philosophy.

The Broadway production was produced and directed by Guthrie McClintic. It opened September 25, 1935 at the Martin Beck Theatre in New York and ran for 195 performances. The cast included Burgess Meredith, Margo, and Eduardo Ciannelli. It won the first ever New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best Play.

Meredith, Margo, and Ciannelli were joined by John Carradine, Stanley Ridges, and Mischa Auer in the 1936 film adaptation, directed by Alfred Santell.

Subscribe

Add to Google

Detour - The Complete Movie

by Len Hart

'Detour' seems always to be on any list of classic, film noir movies, a 'style' said to have reached its zenith in the early 40's. The term itself is attributed to a French Critic --Nino Frank. Literally, it means 'black films.' No one set out to make a 'film noir'. Most 'film noir' are dark, shadowy, suspenseful, and, often, filmed on smaller budgets with smaller casts and available locations. Few huge studio films are associated with this style most often associated with independent producers.

The style results from creative efforts to rise above the limitations of set, scene, and size of cast. While 'classic' Hollywood was producing epics in full color --'The Ten Commandments', 'The Wizard of Oz', smaller producers were make suspenseful crime dramas and influencing larger producers to cast stars like Humphrey Bogart in classic films like 'The Big Sleep'.

The following film is proof that good movies can be made with smaller budgets. Here's the official synopsis of 'Detour':

A Man is involved in two freakish accidents that make him look like a murderer. Poverty row masterwork that is the most precise elucidation of the noir theme of explicit fatalism." - noir expert Spencer Selby | Cast: Tom Neal, Ann Savage, Claudia Drake, Edmund MacDonald. | A B-movie, it was shot in six days. The film, budgeted for $89,000 and ended up costing $117,000 to make.

Detour

Subscribe

Add to Google

Subscribe

Staring at Hopper

by Len Hart

It could be a still-frame from an Alfred Hitchcock movie —a stately lighthouse towering above eye-level. Were not the blues so beautiful and rich it would be bleak.

Another image, Early Sunday Morning, is enigmatic
—a subtle study of the not so gentle play of early morning rays that rake the broken surface of a row of decaying, urban facades of a shade of burnt sienna so nearly the color of dried blood that we are discomforted. It is a building made surrealistically stark in the sunrise sidelight; we can only wonder —were these buildings ever inhabited?

And finally –a window lit interior reminiscent of Vermeer. But there are no rich tapestries, no virginals, no Sixteenth Century maps.

Just a woman staring blankly out the open window at, we uneasily suspect, nothing at all.

The artist is the quintessential American artist: Edward Hopper. One of his most famous paintings, Night Hawks, depicts a near empty diner in the wee, small hours of the morning. Night Hawks, painted in 1942, is a tour-de-force of American "film noir". The man in the fedora could be Sam Spade; his female companion —a leggy client. [See the detail view of Night Hawks]

It is fitting that this painting is parodied in an image that has become almost as famous as the original. In it, the diner is peopled by Humphrey Bogart, Marilyn Monroe, and James Dean. Like these personalities both Hopper and his satirists have captured the essence of American alienation —people in public, together, but alone, and at night. If the street outside is not wet, it should be and will be, soon; if not tonight, some night! And in a black and white movie. Here’s lookin’ at you kid.

Hopper himself claims no such intentions. His purpose was merely to capture the play of light and shade. That he succeeded so brilliantly is undeniable. However, Hopper himself acknowledged viewers’ interpretations even if he did not agree with them. Of one of his paintings, he wrote:

The picture is an attempt to paint sunlight as white, with almost or no yellow pigment in the white. Any psychologic [Sic] idea will have to be supplied by the viewer.

—Edward Hopper

Unlike many another American artist, Hopper never intended to develop an “American” style; he did so in spite of himself. His goal was more modest.

“I guess I'm not very human. All I really want to do is paint light on the side of a house."

—Edward Hopper

He succeeded admirably. His painting of 1925, House by the Railroad, is a study of sunlight on the side of a house, to be sure, but much more besides.

The low vantage point, like that of his famous lighthouse, is as edgy as the Bates Motel. We are curious but not nearly curious enough to want to go inside. Like his silent, lonely human observers who stare into the void, the façade stares but at you!

Hopper’s compositions are minimalist. But it would be uncharacteristic of Hopper to have done so because he believed in a doctrine like "less is more".

No, Hopper was just being Hopper when in 1951, he returned to the open window to the sea theme. As if to underscore a recurring theme of emptiness, he left out the staring woman. We are left with the emptiness in a bare room.

Stare at a Hopper long enough and you will find yourself in Hopper’s universe beside the young woman staring out the open window, among the anonymous souls together and alone in the diner, like the stately lighthouse which regards a vast but empty ocean. Friedrich Nietzche said that if you stare into the abyss long enough, it will stare back at you. Is that what it means to be alone?

Americana

Subscribe

Add to Google