Last week in The Wall Street Journal, I interviewed men's clothing designer and retailer John Varvatos for my "House Call" column in the Mansion section (go here). His designs always seem torn from the pages of rock magazines. John was born in a working-class suburb of Detroit and grew up listening to rock and thumbing through fan magazines. Which is how he developed an eye for the singular fashion trends of rock stars. After stints working for Ralph Lauren and Calvin Klein, and time spent at the Fashion Institute of Technology, John started his own company specializing in menswear with a rock-star feel. [Photo above courtesy of John Varvatos]
SiriusXM. On Wednesday at 10 a.m., I'll be on SiriusXM's Feedback (Ch. 106) with co-hosts Nik Carter and Lori Majewski to talk about Janis Joplin and the new 50th anniversary set of Cheap Thrills, one of hard rock's critical turning-point albums.
George Romanis and Rey Michel. Following my post last week on the 1959 and '61 big-band albums of George Romanis and Rey Michel, Brett Gold sent along the following:
"Marc, you're right to highlight Romanis's obscurity—I certainly had never heard of him or Rey Michel. A couple of comments on the I Can't Get Started arrangement from Romanis's Double Explosure! The solo is by Urbie Green (clearly), and on the second eight bars of the melody, the arrangement tracks the background accompaniment of the classic Dizzy Gillespie sextet arrangement of the tune, including the downward chromatic chords that conflict with the melody."
Here's Gillespie playing and singing I Can't Get Started with his sextet in January 1945, with Trummy Young (tb), Don Byas (ts), Clyde Hart, (p) Oscar Pettiford (b) and Shelly Manne (d). Many forget that Manne started playing bop early with Gillespie and others in New York...
And here's the Gillespie big band in Paris in 1948 performing the song at the Salle Pleyel...
Bin bash. Congrats to Jim Eigo (pictured right, with guitarist Dave Stryker) on the opening last week of Original Vinyl Records—Jim's new vinyl record shop at 314 State Route 94 South in Warwick, N.Y. Jim, of course, also heads Jazz Promo Services. For information and regular store hours, call 845-987-3131.
Melvin Rhyne radio. "Symphony" Sid Gribetz will host a five-hour tribute to organist Melvin Rhyne this Sunday, December 16, 2018, from 2 to 7 p.m. on “Jazz Profiles” on WKCR-FM in New York. Listen from anywhere in the world on your phone or computer by going here.
Wanda Stafford recorded In Love for the Very First Time for Roulette in 1960. The album featured Bernie Glow, Burt Collins, Louis Mucci and Johnny Glasel (tp); Bill Elton, Don Sebesky, Eddie Bert and Kenneth Guffey (tb); Dick Meldonian (cl,as); Tony Ferina (bar); Bill Evans (p); Howard Collins (g); John Drew (b) and Ed Shaughnessy (d).
Wanda will be singing at the Panama Hotel Restaurant in San Rafael, Calif., on December 18 from 7 to 10 p.m. Wanda has performed at the venue regularly for the past 20 years with pianist Si Perkoff. If you're in the area, catch the singing legend. For more information, go here. To read my two-part interview with Wanda, go here and here.
Here's Wanda singing The Most Beautiful Words with Bill Evans (p), Howard Collins (g), John Drew (b) and Ed Shaughnessy (d)...
What the heck: Here's brother and sister Karen and Richard Carpenter singing Hurting Each Other in the early 1970s. The late Karen Carpenter remains one of the great voices of the 1970s...
Oddball album cover of the week.
I'm sure music comes naturally to moonshiners, who have to spend hours sitting around waiting for corn mash poured into a sealed copper pot to heat to 175 degrees. When it does, the vapor travels through a copper pipe to the thump keg and then to the worm barrel where the vapor passes through coiled tubing submerged in cold water and emerges as clear whisky. I'm not sure where you'd plug in a turntable in the woods to spin this album. But I suspect the music isn't for the makin' of the hooch but for the settin' and samplin'.
