A Salute to the Golden Age of American Popular Music
We salute the music from Broadway, Hollywood, New Orleans, Tin Pan Alley and the "melody makers;" i.e. the bands and singers that brought the music to us via the radio, recordings and live events in the period from the 1920's to the 1960's. This is the golden period of Gershwin, Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, Richard Rodgers, Larry Hart, Oscar Hammerstein, Johnny Mercer, Hoagy Carmichael, Jimmy Van Heusen, Harold Arlen, Harry Warren, etc.
Los Angeles PBS tv station will present Glazier's new TV show, "From Ragtime to Reel Time-Richard Glazier in Concert", next Wednesday, August 29th, at 9:00 PM. Richard will be live in the studio talking and playing between segments of the show.
KCET will do repeat broadcasts on Thursday, August 30th at 2:00 PM; Tuesday, September 4th at noon, and Thursday, September 6th at 2:00 PM.
Also---this Sunday, August 26th, Richard will be performing at the Napa Valley Opera House in Napa at 4:00PM. Tickets are still available. See his website for more information.
Here is news from THE RIDGEFIELD PLAYHOUSE in Ridgefield Connecticut;
Tommy Emmanuel
Thu, 09/20/2012 - 8:00pm
The Guinness Black Lager Rock Series
Two-time Grammy nominee Tommy Emmanuel is on of Australia's most respected musicians. The legendary guitarist has a professional career that spans five decades and continues to intersect with some of the finest musicians throughout the world. Blazing, flawless, and spectacular are how you describe his performances – it’s what has taken him from the wild Down Under to the world's most charismatic, soulful and technically brilliant fingerstyle guitar player. His unique “finger style” is akin to playing guitar the way a pianist plays piano, using all ten fingers. Rather than using a whole band for melody, rhythm, bass, and drum parts, Tommy plays all that – at once – and on one guitar.
Ticket Price: $50.00
Medeski Martin & Wood
Wed, 10/10/2012 - 8:00pm
An Acoustic Evening with Medeski, Martin & Wood
"Wide open" is the phrase John Medeski uses to describe his bandmates’ musical sensibilities, the attitude he seeks in himself and the spirit of musical adventure that Medeski Martin & Wood have pursued for two decades. The trio’s amalgam of jazz, funk and a million other musical currents and impulses is nearly impossible to classify, which is just how they like it.
The trio is made up of Medeski’s keyboard excursions, Chris Wood’s hard-charging bass lines and Billy Martin’s supple, danceable beats. They music has come to resemble a single organism, moving gracefully between genre-defying compositions and expansive improvisation atop a relentless groove.
Ticket Price: $45.00
Pat Metheny Unity Band
Thu, 10/11/2012 - 8:00pm
An Evening of Wine and Jazz Sponsored by 109 Cheese and Wine- Enjoy a free wine tasting in the lobby at 7:15pm
Winner of 19 Grammy Awards, jazz guitarist Pat Metheny is considered one of the brightest stars in the jazz community. It is one thing to attain popularity as a musician, but it is another to receive the kind of acclaim Metheny has garnered from critics and peers. Over the years, Metheny has won countless polls as "Best Jazz Guitarist" and awards, including three gold records for (Still Life) Talking, Letter from Home, and Secret Story. Pat has put together a killer band for this new project called THE PAT METHENY UNITY BAND. The lineup for this project is sax great Chris Potter, PMG and PM Trio drummer, Antonio Sanchez and great young bassist Ben Williams.
Ticket Price: $85.00
Spyro Gyra
Fri, 10/26/2012 - 8:00pm
An Evening of Wine and Jazz courtesy of No.109 Cheese and Wine
Enjoy a free wine tasting in the lobby at 7:15pm
Another great evening of wine and jazz! Spyro Gyra have performed over five thousand shows, released twenty-nine albums (not counting “Best Of…” compilations) selling over ten million albums while also achieving one platinum and two gold albums. These upcoming milestones include 2012, which is thirty-five years since their first album release and 2014 will be forty years as a band. They show little sign of wanting to slow down either, gaining Grammy® nominations for each of their last four albums.
Ticket Price: $55
THE RIDGEFIELD PLAYHOUSE
80 East Ridge
Ridgefield, Connecticut 06877
203.438.5795
Visit our website for the complete season line-up www.ridgefieldplayhouse.org
Mr. Glenn Miller
R. K. O. Building
New York, New York
Dear Mr. Miller,
This is to acknowledge only your very kind letter to me of August 12th, indicating your willingness to make personal, patriotic sacrifice for the duration of the war. I expect to discuss the policy and problem with General Somervell, Commanding General, Services of Supply, within the next few days, and after he has reviewed the matter, I will be able to give you a definite reply as to the attitude of the War Department and perhaps of the Government toward your indicated desire for service.
With kindest personal regards to you, your mother and your family, I am,
Here is a letter written by Glenn Miller from the files of the Glenn Miller Archive, courtesy of Dennis M. Spragg;
August 12, 1942
Brigadier General Charles D. Young Room 5136 Interstate Commerce Building 12th Street and Constitution Avenue, N. W. Washington, D. C.
Dear General Young,
In your recent letter to me, you mentioned the desirability of "streamlining" our present day military music. This touches upon a subject which is close to my heart and about which I think I can speak with some authority.
I wish you could read some of the many, many letters that have come to me during the past months from our men in military service expressing their appreciation of our various army camp appearances and our USO broadcasts. I wish you could also read some of the newspaper reports of interviews with our service men now in Australia and other distant places, and their pleas that broadcasts from home included a generous share of our music. These letters and reports all show that the interest of our boys lies definitely in modern, popular music, as played by an orchestra such as ours, rather than in the music to which their fathers listened twenty-five years ago, most of which is still being played by army bands just as it was in World War days.
The many requests for broadcasts, records, programs, dedications and arrangements are very pleasing to me but they leave me wishing that I might do something concrete in the way of setting up a plan that would enable our music to reach our service men here and abroad with some degree of regularity. I have a feeling that if this could be arranged it would help considerably to ease some of the difficulties of army life.
For the past three or four years my orchestra has enjoyed phenomenal popularity until we have now reached a point where our weekly gross income ranges from $15,000 to $20,000. Needless to say, this has been and is most profitable to me personally but I am wondering if it would not be more in order at this time for me to be bending my efforts toward the continuance of this income if it could be devoted to USO purposes, the Army Relief Fund or some other approved purpose. If, by means of a series of benefit performances or other approved methods, even some part of this income could be maintained and used for the improvement of army morale I would be entirely willing to forego it for the duration. At the same time, by appropriate planning, programs could be regularly broadcast to the men in the service and I have an idea that such programs might put a little more spring into the feet of our marching men and a little more joy into their hearts.
With these thoughts in mind I should like to go into the army if I could be placed in charge of a modernized army band. I feel that I could really do a job for the army in the field of modern music. I am thirty-eight years of age and am in excellent physical condition. I have, of course, registered for the draft but have not been classified. Inasmuch as I have been married for twelve years, I would suppose that under present regulations I shall be ultimately placed in Class 3A. I mention this only because I want you to know that my suggestion stems from a sincere desire to do a real job for the army and that desire is not actuated by any personal draft problem.
I was born in Clarinda, Iowa and raised in Colorado. Both of my parents were also American born. I am a grammar school and high school graduate and also attended the University of Colorado for two years. My connection with music is not of recent origin. I have been playing and arranging music ever since my high school days.
I hope you will feel that there is a job I can do for the army. If so, I shall be grateful if you will have the proper person contact me and instruct me as to further procedure.
With kind personal regards and appreciating your interest, I am,
Tony Martin (born as Alvin Morris in San Francisco, California), one of the last of the big band and big-name singer-actors from the golden age of Hollywood musicals, has died of natural causes Friday at his home in Los Angeles, his longtime business manager, Stan Schneider, told The Times. He was 98.
Tony Martin sang with Glenn Miller's Army band and with several post-war big bands. In World War II as a corporal in the United States Army Air Corp he was assigned to Capt. Glenn Miller's band, singing in a number of the band's concerts both stateside and then in England. He was later promoted to technical sergeant in the Air Transport Command and stationed in India, where Brig. Gen. William H. Tunner, commanding the Hump Airlift, put him to work as an entertainer, forming a troupe of amateur talent from the command and taking it around the various bases to perform.
As a young man, he joined the band of a local Bay area orchestra leader, Tom Gerun, as a reed instrument specialist, sitting alongside the future bandleader Woody Herman. He attended Saint Mary's College of California during the mid-1930s. After college, he left Gerun's band to go to Hollywood to try his luck in films. It was at that time that he adopted the stage name of Tony Martin.
He was a featured vocalist on the George Burns and Gracie Allen radio program. On the show Allen playfully flirted with Tony, often threatening to fire him. She'd say things like "Oh Tony you look so tired, why don't you rest your lips on mine."
In films, he was first cast in a number of bit parts, including a role as a sailor in the movie Follow the Fleet (1936), starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. He eventually signed with 20th Century-Fox and then Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in which he starred in a number of musicals. Between 1938 and 1942, he made a number of hit records for Decca. Martin was featured in the 1941 Marx Brothers film The Big Store, in which he played a singer and performed the "Tenement Symphony," which was written by Hal Borne, who became his long-time musical director.
He cut 25 records in 1946 and 1947 for Mercury, including a 1946 recording of "To Each His Own" which became a million-seller. This prompted RCA Victor records to offer him a contract, which he signed in 1947.
He appeared in film musicals in the 1940s and 1950s. His rendition of "Lover Come Back To Me" with Joan Weldon in "Deep in My Heart" - based on the music of Sigmund Romberg and starring José Ferrer - was one of the highlights of that film. He also starred as Gaylord Ravenal in the Show Boat segment from the 1946 Jerome Kern bio film "Till the Clouds Roll By."
In 1937 he married Alice Faye, with whom he had starred in several films. They divorced in 1941. Martin remarried, to actress and dancer Cyd Charisse in 1948.
They remained married until her death in 2008. They had one son together, Tony Martin, Jr. (August 28, 1950 – April 10, 2011), who predeceased his father. Martin adopted Charisse's son, Nicky, from her first marriage.
Martin died on the evening of July 27, 2012, of natural causes.
Here is a selected list of his most popular recordings:
1938 "The Moon Of Manakoora"(with Ray Noble)
"I Hadn't Anyone Till You"(with Ray Noble)
1939 "South of the Border"
1940 "It's a Blue World"
"Fools Rush In"
1941 "Tonight We Love"
1942 "To Each His Own"
1946 "I'll Dance At Your Wedding"
1948 "Hooray For Love"
"Confess"
"For Every Man There's a Woman"
"It's Magic
1949 "There's No Tomorrow"
"Marta"
1950 "Valencia"
"La Vie en rose"
1951 "In Your Arms"(with Dinah Shore)
"Would I Love You" "I Get Ideas"
1951 "I Apologize"
"Domino"
1952 "Kiss of Fire"
1953 "April In Portugal"
1954 "Stranger In Paradise"
"Here"
1956 "Walk Hand In Hand"
1957 "Do I Love You (Because You're Beautiful)"
