(Stan Getz offers the usual magic)

I haven't done any live Jazz posts in a while, and for absolutely no good reason. So I thought I would make up for that by offering a very special Club date featuring the Shelly Manne Quintet and The Stan Getz Quartet, recorded live by CBS Radio at the Basin Street in New York City on April 21, 1956.

As far as I know neither of these performances have been made commercially available (or even as bootlegs), so this should be a special treat for both Shelly Manne fans and Stan Getz fans. Both groups are in top form and feature an all-star cast of sidemen.

Good way to close out the week.

Enjoy.

(Thomas Mann in 1937 - A few choice words about responsibility in troubling times)

When I first began Newstalgia, one of my first entries was an excerpt of a Thomas Mann address, given at the 1937 dinner in honor of The New School For Social Research in New York City. At the time, I was going through YouTube and could only play a ten minute clip of the address. I promised myself I would play it someday again, in its entirety and without edits, and I'm happy to say I'm doing that right now.

Thomas Mann: “It is easy enough to say that the imaginative writer has nothing to do with politics, that he can entirely disassociate himself from them and that he actually derogates from his high calling by paying any attention to political developments. That is nonsense. For firstly, as if any imaginative writer would interfere in politics today wantonly or for his own pleasure, as if it were not a matter of the most direst necessity, it is pairing protest against the wicked aggressions carried out by politics upon this most sacred servant, upon spiritual freedom, upon mankind itself.”

One of the greatest writers and philosophers of our time, whose works were condemned as degenerate and burned by the Nazis, forcing Mann to flee to Switzerland and eventually to the U.S. where he settled during the years of World War 2.

Here is the entire address given by Thomas Mann from April 15, 1937 as presented to a dinner honoring the New School For Social Research.

True words then - true words now.

(Niels Bohr - Physics owes a lot . . .so does the Atom for that matter)

Tonights Gallimaufry features an address by Niels Bohr from Copenhagen Denmark on the occasion of the 25th anniversary (April 5, 1913) of Bohrs completion of his paper on The Bohr Theory on the Structure of the Atom.

Niels Bohr: “Of course, in a short speech, it would be quite impossible to give any detailed account of the marvelous development of atomic fission in our days. And so therefore only recall a few points, especially suited to illustrate the decisive role cooperation has played.”

The broadcast, via shortwave and Bohr's thick accent make understanding a little difficult, but the historic nature of this recording makes those problems not that big a deal.

Another small dose of history from the Archives at Newstalgia.

hint-hint.

(Birdland on 52nd Street - A hotbed of Jazz activity in the 1950s)

A live set from July 3, 1952 featuring Arnett Cobb and his Orchestra and The George Shearing Quintet at Birdland on 52nd Street in New York.

NBC radio, throughout the 1940s and 50s did weekly live sets from Birdland, as did all the other networks from various clubs and ballrooms around the country. Live music on the radio was a nightly embarrassment of riches with bands, small groups, singers - just about everybody with a union card, getting their 15 to 90 minute musical messages across to millions of interested listeners.

And this was one of those nights.

(Oscar Levant - worlds Greatest Neurotic who chummed around with Gershwin)

As long as we're still in Fourth of July weekend mode, I thought I would toss in a little Gershwin as interpreted by his friend Oscar Levant for good measure.

This is a Hollywood Bowl concert from July 25, 1950 featuring Levant, along with the Los Angeles Philharmonic conducted by Artur Rodzinski, playing the Gershwin Concerto in F, a bunch of encores which included some DeFalla and ended up with a solo version of "Rhapsody In Blue".

Never available commercially, and from the original raw transcription disc masters.

And as we like to say here at Newstalgia "You heard it here first!"

In 1938, the year Radio grew up, on-the-spot news coverage was unheard of, but Shortwave broadcasts and the immediacy of the news were relatively new and somewhat novel. So subsequently, every news event that took place in some distant locale had to be covered. The crisis at Munich was the big news story for 1938. But there were a lot of others.

This particular news story was about a Soviet scientific mission gone terribly wrong. A group of Soviet Scientists, studying the Arctic were stranded when an Ice floe they set base camp up on broke off and went drifting into the ocean. The floe was in constant danger of breaking up and, if it wasn't going to break up, it was in the process of slowly melting, as it was heading south into warmer waters. A rescue attempt by Dirigible failed, killing the commander and crew when it was lost in a blizzard. The drama lasted for a long time before the Scientists were finally rescued and brought home on February 19, 1938.

This broadcast, a shortwave interview with the surviving Scientists was conducted between New York and Moscow by CBS Radio and Radio Moscow on March 23, 1938.

Not only is it a historic document of early Actuality broadcasting, but it's also a historic document of a scientific mission to learn more about the North Pole which, prior to that time was still a mystery.

A dose of Americana tonight by way of the King of Bluegrass, Bill Monroe. This is a tape made during a performance at New River Ranch in Rising Sun, Maryland on July 28, 1963 playing to an enthusiastic audience. Bluegrass staged a revival in the late 1950's/ early 1960's, right around the same time Folk Music dipped its toes in mainstream and gave us The Kingston Trio, The Brothers Four, The Christy Minstrels and a whole generation of others. But what it also did was give Bluegrass a boost and legendary practitioners like Bill Monroe were on hand to reap the rewards and adulation of a whole new audience of fans who had never been exposed to this slice of rural life before.

And maybe you haven't either. Bill Monroe left a long and rich legacy, and fortunately for many, these concerts were recorded and are, for the most part preserved. These tapes weren't broadcast and judging by the photos in the tape box, were recorded by a very dedicated engineer by the name of George B. McCeney. Anything beyond that, I really don't know aside from this being a pretty fast-paced half hour of some serious Bluegrass.

Something you don't hear every day.

During all the recent brouhaha over Joe McGinnis' Sarah Palin adventures, it hadn't occurred to me (or a lot of people, for that matter) that this was the same Joe McGinnis who wrote the landmark non-fiction book The Selling of The President: 1968, in which McGinnis detailed, perhaps for the first time in history, the inner-machinations of electing a President in the United States by means of Public Relations and Marketing.

Since 1968 was a particularly bloody year for politics, the release of this book, chronicling the events and the marketing behind a Presidential campaign were revelatory. No one had done it before, and the end result was looking at the whole process of selecting a President much differently than ever before.

That's not to say there weren't elaborate ad campaigns and Advertising Agencies involved in Political campaigns before 1968, we just weren't privy to them in a way we became after that election.

Here is a radio interview with Joe McGinnis, done for the weekly syndicated series At Issue for Harper's Magazine in February 1970.

Yes, things were rather different back then.

In the 1960's endless discussions were spent laboring over the subject of The Communications Gap. An adjunct to the Generation Gap, The Communications Gap had more to do with selective hearing than it actually had to do with language skills. Case in point was the subject of music. Even in the 60's members of the mainstream were hard pressed to figure out what Rock music was. Rather than accept it as a form of popular music it was viewed as some secret society to which only a select few were privy to the myriad of ever-changing codes. The dark, mysterious and all encompassing Counterculture.

I ran across this panel discussion (more of an inquiry), originally broadcast around 1969 and rebroadcast in 1971. It featured a rather eclectic cast of characters, including Frank Zappa, L.A. Philharmonic Music Director and Conductor Zubin Mehta. Philharmonic Manager Ernest Fleischmann. Film composer David Raksin and the KPFK moderators Lew Merckelson and William Strother.

Zappa is viewed by Mehta and Fleischmann much the same way Esmeralda viewed Quasimodo - with a degree of repulsion and curiosity. Mehta is adamant in explaining that "young people don't understand counterpoint" as the reason they don't go to Classical music concerts. Zappa explains that Classical music has gone through a season of doldrums and the conservative programming in the concert hall needed more new and adventuresome pieces performed. The younger audiences were there - Zubin and Ernest were just going about finding them the wrong way. The borderline patronizing and condescending dismissal were symptomatic of what the universal problem was in all aspects of the 60's. Music was no exception.

What's interesting about this interview is that it pre-dates the L.A. Philharmonic/Mothers Of Invention concerts that eventually took place at UCLA in May of 1970 - the results being partially disastrous and part wildly successful in the first performance of 200 Motels which featured both the L.A. Philharmonic and The Mothers of Invention in what Frank referred to as "Zubin And The Jets". So obviously some groundwork was laid, no matter how tenuous.

But from a historic point of view this is an interesting panel discussion and one I don't think has been heard in 40 years. It's interesting to realize how much the whole field has changed in that time. Zappa went on to be regarded as a composer capable of not only his signature material, but also his serious material and was championed in that regard by none other than Pierre Boulez, who is also a respected composer and much loved musician (there was an attempt once, by members of the Philharmonic to draft Boulez as Music Director, but flattered, he declined).

So attitudes eventually change, but hearing how they arrive there is usually more interesting than the end results. This half hour broadcast gives you some idea of just what the atmosphere was like.

Mahalia Jackson is probably one of the best known Gospel singers of the last 75 years. Her voice was legendary and she had the great distinction of bringing Gospel to audiences not familiar with or segregated from the Black Church and the rich musical heritage that was so much a part of her. She crossed the color line and genre barriers so prevalent in 1950's America. She sang in churches and at Jazz festivals (the great Documentary Jazz On A Summers Day features her alongside such greats as Dinah Washington and Gerry Mulligan).

In 1967 she wrote an autobiography of her life and career called Movin' On Up and this interview is part of the tour she did to promote that book. It's a rare interview and one loaded with insights to the artist and the woman. If you're familiar with her, you may not have heard this candid interview before (it was originally broadcast over what was eventually to become PBS). And if you're not familiar with her, here is a wonderful opportunity to hear one of the truly great singers describe what it was like, growing up in a segregated world and pursuing your dream to become one of the foremost Gospel singers in the world.