Last week in The Wall Street Journal, I interviewed actor Ed Begley Jr. for my "House Call" column in the Mansion section (go here). Ed has been in more than 100 movies and even more TV shows, starting with My Three Sons, Room 222 and St. Elsewhere. A fascinating conversation on how the woman he thought was his mother wasn't, and the woman he thought was a beloved family friend was. [Photo above of Ed Begley Jr. courtesy of IMDb]
Here's Ed on CBS...
Street Scene. I snapped this trio heading uptown two weeks ago (before the deluge) on New York's Upper West Side. Sometimes you catch a moment that winds up being perfect. What drew me to the image was the artful crowding and the apparent resignation of the uncomfortable passengers. The older boy has his phone so he's deeply preoccupied. The one with red sneakers was asleep. But the third was fed up. What surprised me about the image was that the boy up front had made eye contact with the camera lens, which is what makes this image particularly special to me in addition to the composition. [Photo above by Marc Myers]
Peggy Connelly was a singer and actress who recorded an album and a half—four tracks with Marty Paich and a full one with Russ Garcia. The vocalist, who had a passing likeness to Ava Gardner, also was renown for dating Frank Sinatra from the spring of 1955 to the spring of 1957. Here is the text that accompanied a post from the Frank Sinatra Respectful Posting page at Facebook [Photo above of Frank Sinatra and Peggy Connelly at the 28th Academy Awards in 1956; Sinatra was nominated for Best Actor for his performance in The Man with the Golden Arm.]
Happy Birthday Peggy Connelly (September 25, 1931 – June 11, 2007). Here are some of her memories:
"Frank was lucky with his skin. He had that kind of skin that only needed a little while in the sun to turn a lovely golden tan. I don’t recall any chest hair, perhaps almost none. He was lean of course, then, and he had unusual hands, rounded and padded, strong-looking.
"Everything Frank possessed was the cleanest, the best, fresh-smelling. The sheets, the towels, the whole house, smelled good. Everything around him was immaculate, in perfect order, his home, his dressing room and his bedroom, his closets, his drawers.
"There were two perfumes he used. Yardley’s English Lavender for his drawers, shirts, and things. And Jungle Gardenia, which had been Ava Gardner’s fragrance. He kept her perfume in his bathroom, and you could smell it on his things.
"Out of the public eye, Frank wore beautiful cashmere sweaters in orange and olive gradations. He favored peach, and he had beautiful gold sweaters and cotton shirts. I remember the accent on the color orange in the house and in the furnishings.
"He read. He always had these big books, whatever was out at the time. Even when we hadn’t been together that long, we’d sit in bed with pillows behind us. He would read one of his books, or his script for the next day’s shooting. I remember reading Zen in the Art of Archery. Sinatra the great lover lying in bed with his studious girlfriend reading Zen books. Even then it struck me as amusing.
"If he got angry, it went from zero to ten. There wasn’t much in between. I was with him once in Italy, and the paparazzi had spoiled everything. You can’t imagine what it’s like. You can’t go shopping, go out to eat, do anything. At the Rome airport, when we were leaving, he finally had had enough.
"We were seated on the plane, seatbelts fastened, and the buzzards were outside the door still. Suddenly he excused himself and got up and disappeared out the door. He came back only slightly ruffled, and sat down again. I only discovered later that he had punched out one of them.
"In bars or nightclubs where he was singing, people would get pally, say ‘Have a drink’ or something, and touch him on the shoulder. He would freeze, look down at that hand on his arm and stare, and not move until the hand was taken off... If someone displeased him, he would indicate it with a facial expression."
Connelly, who had lived in France for many years, saw parallels between the characters of Sinatra and the actor Alain Delon: "The charm of both of them was all wrapped up in the mythology of what the French call the caïd. It’s an old Arab word, used in France to describe a man who is powerfully attractive but outside the law. Such a man is flamboyant, commanding, cocky, swaggering, big with the ladies—like a Mafia figure. He dominates people. Delon played the caïd, Frank lived the part."
She often went with him in the recording studio: "I can still hear him biting off the words, his perfect diction and rhythm. I wasn’t a connoisseur then. I was too young, and I didn’t have the experience. But his technique and timbre, his sense of swing, plus the taste and the intelligence to put it all together—that rates legendary."
One morning she woke up and found that he had painted a clown on her toothbrush glass with the text, "Good morning, darling." Wrote Peggy, "Life went along like a dream."
Chuck Israels. Last week I heard from the bassist following my post on Finnish jazz:
Hi Marc, many Finns play jazz exceptionally well, in no small part due to drummer-pianist-composer Jukkis Uotila (above), who created and maintained the program at Helsinki's Sibelius Academy with a firm foundation in bebop. All the students are conversant in the fundamentals of the language. It’s worth acknowledging his unusually authentic contribution.
Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis. Following my posts on the tenor saxophonist last week, I came across a YouTube clip of Jaws playing I Can't Get Started in Denmark in 1985 backed by Neil Jorgen Steen (p), Jesper Lundgaard (b) and Ed Thigpen (d). Here's the clip...
Jazz in Finland. Following my post last weekend on Roger Freundlich's new album, Smooth Talking, Roger sent along a lovely note from Finland...
Hi Marc. What can I say? Super job! I was a bit bummed by the total lack of reviews in Finland so you have saved the day. I was also delighted with your choice of the featured tracks, especially "Sons of the Poets." I personally consider it to be one of the best original ideas I have ever come up with.
There was quite a bit of head-scratching at the recording session about how to play the solos on that song because aside from the conventional chords in the middle section, the piece is not based on chords but on shifting stacks of 4ths. The guys finally figured it out, but I still don't know how they did it.
As for the title, it comes from a John Adams quote, roughly : 'I have to study politics and war, so that my sons can study mathematics, commerce, and agriculture, so that their sons can study poetry, painting, and music.' So my question was, what do their sons study?
Thanks also for picking up the New York angle, because I like to think that the tunes on both albums sound like they were composed by a New Yorker, even though I lived in the city proper until I was 5 years old. After that it was 20 years in Malverne, on New York's Long Island, and after that, when I was 25 in 1970, I moved to Finland, supposedly (haha) for two years.
Thanks again, if you ever do make it over here, I'll buy you the proverbial beer.
And so did Alan Matheson, after I reviewed his new album with Wade Mikkola, Rainy Night in Helsinki:
Dear Marc, thank you so much for the wonderful and insightful review. Your comments encapsulated exactly what Wade and I were going for on this album. I really appreciate your ears and awareness, musically.
I’ve started another round of my jazz history class for the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra’s School of Music and have already let the participants know that JazzWax is an essential resource for the class.
Regarding the new album, the piano I got to use at Robi DeGodzinsky’s studio is one of the best I’ve ever played (and this is based on having the opportunity to sound-check Oscar Peterson’s Bosendorfer piano at Montréal’s “Place Des Arts” in 1989 when our quintet, Fifth Avenue, opened for his trio.
It’s always a pleasure for me to play with Wade, and this summer was our 25th year of playing together on a fairly regular basis. My wife and I have been traveling to Finland almost every summer since 2008. I first met Wade in 1998, when we played in Estonia with the late pianist Aldo Meristo and his quintet. We have been fast friends ever since.
We should look into the idea of playing in New York. it’s about equidistant from Vancouver and Helsinki, and it would be a wonderful opportunity.
Serge Gainsbourg. All last week, director Raymond De Felitta posted on French actor and singer Serge Gainsbourg. Included was a terrific clip of Gainsbourg from 1964 singing Ce Mortel Ennui. Here's the clip...
Andrea Veneziani—The Lighthouse (self-released). Bassist Andrea Veneziani composed all of the tracks on his new album, which has marvelous energy. What I love most is the unusual makeup of his quartet, which includes Kirk Knuffke on cornet, Charlie Sigler on guitar and Allan Mednard on drums. You don't often hear these instruments together in a small ensemble, and the resulting textures are especially tender and pensive on ballads and reverberating on uptempo pieces. Recorded last year in Paramus, N.J., the music's lyrical quality rests squarely on Kirk, but Andrea is right there with warm, strong bass lines and Charlie chimes in on his ringing guitar. Allan's sticks and brushes make it all shimmer. This album is perfectly suited for autumn, when the colorful scenery causes one to reflect. You'll find the album streaming on YouTube, Apple Music, Amazon and at Spotify here.
Here's In Perpetuum...
Dave Thompson. Here's a clip of the pianist working through The Touch of Your Lips. (For his latest album go here)...
FM Radio Archive. Last week, I heard from Kim Paris of the FM Radio Archive:
Hi Marc, thanks for your recent JazzWax posts on Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis and Ray Brown. Here are broadcast recordings by these artists on the FM Radio Archive:
Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis—is featured in two Chicago concerts on NPR/WBEZ from 1981 and 1982 shared by Mark Rabin. Go here.
Ray Brown and his trio—played with vibraphonist Milt Jackson in a 1993 concert on KJAZ from Yoshi's jazz club in Oakland, Calif. This also comes from Mark Rabin's collection. Go here.
Thelonious Monk radio. WKCR-FM in New York will present its annual "Thelonious Monk Birthday Broadcast" on Tuesday, October 10. The station and its program hosts, including Sid Gribetz, will be spinning Monk's music for 24 hours. You can listen from anywhere in the world by going here.
And finally, here's Chet Baker in Paris playing Autumn in New York in October 1955, backed by Gerard Gustin (p), Jimmy Bond (b) and Bert Dahlander (d)...
