In The Wall Street Journal this week, I interviewed English actor Paul Bettany for my "House Call" column in the Mansion section (go here). Paul currently co-stars with The Crown's Claire Foy in Prime Video's A Very British Scandal. Here's the trailer...
Singer Louise Alexandra snapped the two images above on a New York visit last week (or rather, she snapped one and her wonderful daughter the other). Louise's album Today is a must. I was gratified to see that my 2018 book, Anatomy of a Song, had a perimeter placement on the sale table at Labyrinth Books (right next to the memoir by Talking Heads' Chris Frantz). What began as three copies left has now been reduced to two. Thanks, Louise! Separately, I'll have some exciting new-book news to share closer to the summer. Stand by!
New verse to Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most. Last week, I heard from English jazz vocalist Sarah Moule:
Hi Marc, hope you're well and enjoying spring over there. London is really beautiful at the moment. It's cherry blossom time and the place is full of it. As you know, my husband, pianist Simon Wallace, and I were friends with Fran Landesman (above) in her last years. At one point, she wrote me the lyrics to a new verse for her 1955 song with Tommy Wolf, "Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most":
While the world embraces lovers
There's no trophy heart for me to boast
I'll just have to wait for my spirits to recover
Spring can really hang you up the most
Want to hear? Here's a videoclip of Simon and Sarah recording a newly released single of the song. In case you're wondering, the new verse comes at 3:10. To buy the single, go here. And now, here's the videoclip...
Ed Sullivan roundup. Another week, another great bunch of new Ed Sullivan Show videos:
Here's Sammy Davis Jr. singing My Kind of Town (Manhattan Is) in 1964...
Here's Louis Prima and Keely Smith in 1960 singing a medley. Easily now the best Prima-Smith clip on YouTube...
Here's Sammy singing Night Song in 1964...
Here's Peggy Lee in 1950 singing Show Me the Way to Get Out of This World...
Here's Sammy again singing What Kind of Fool Am I? in 1964...
Bonus: Here's an exquisite video of Dorothy Dandridge singing That's All, with a fabulous intro, in 1960...
Stride to boogie-woogie. Danilo Morandi in Switzerland sent along this videoclip of four piano giants—Johnny Guarnieri, Earl "Fatha" Hines, Art Hodes and Sammy Price—engaging in a keyboard shootout in Nice, France in 1975...
Sir Roland Hanna. As Mark Cathcart points out in his most recent post at the Creed Taylor Produced tribute site, pianist Roland Hanna was a CTI recording artist. In the post, he gathered all of Hanna's preludes for Salvation Records, a CTI gospel subsidiary launched in 1972. The Hanna albums originally were released only in Japan. Go here.
And finally, here's Grant Green playing Count Every Star...
And here are the Ravens with their 1950 hit on National Records...
