Music Magg

by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2021 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved Last night I had a Blu-Ray disc I wanted to run of Ambroise Thomas’s 1868 opera Hamlet in a new production from 2019 featuring the chorus of the Opéra-Comique (do I really need to explain once again that the name of the venue has nothing necessarily to do with the “comic” or non-“comic” nature of the works performed there? Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette and Bizet’s Carmen , both with famously un happy endings, were premiered at the Opéra-Comique) and the group Les Éléments along with the Orchestre des Champs-Élysees conducted by Louis Langrée.The stars were baritone Stéphane Degout as Hamlet (Thomas was originally going to compose the role for tenor, but the famous baritone Jean-Baptiste Fauré – best known today as the composer of the song “Les Rameaux” – was “between parts” just then so it became a vehicle for him), coloratura soprano Sabine Deviellhe as Ophelia, bass Laurent Alvaro as Claudius, mezz...

Hot Flashes: Rare High-Quality Short-Lived Bands: Their Complete Recordings Vintage Music Productions VMP 0191 (2006) Musical Stevedores: “Happy Rhythm,” “Honeycomb Harmony”: Freddie Jenkins, Louis Metcalf (t), Henry Hicks (tb), Clarence Grimes, Charlie Holmes (as, ss, cl), Cliff Jackson (p, cymbal), Elmer Snowden (bjo), Bud Hicks (b-b, scat vcl) – N.Y.C., 1/16/29 (Columbia) Trombone Red and His Blue Six: “Greasey [sic] Plate Stomp,” “B-Flat Blues” Charlie Gaines or Jabbo Smith (t), Robert Freeman (tb), Otto Hardwick (as), Duke Ellington (p), Fred Guy (bjo), Sonny Greer (d), unk. (vcl) – N.Y.C., 6/18/31 (Columbia) Charlie Skeete and His Orchestra: “Tampeekoe,” “Deep Henderson” Leonard Davis, Tommy Hodges (t), Tommy Jones (tb), Gene Johnson (cl, as, bs-s), Cliff Glover (cl, as, ts), Charlie Skeete (p, dir), Joe Jones (bjo), Bill Brown (b-b), Tommy Benford (d) – N.Y.C., 6/8/26 (Edison) Lee Weimer’s Black and White Aces: “Louisiana Bo Bo,” “The Merry Widow’s Got a Sweetie Now” ...

by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2021 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved I’ve been listening to a Boogieology Records CD compilation called The Atlas Records Story – Atlas Records having been a short-lived independent label based in Los Angeles in the mid-1940’s. It’ was founded by a songwriter named Robert Scherman and is most notable for being Nat “King” Cole’s last label before he started his long and prosperous career on Capitol in 1943 – in fact Capitol actually bought Cole’s contract from Atlas and also got some masters Cole had recorded for Atlas that became his first Capitol releases (much the way Sam Phillips’ sale of Elvis Presley’s Sun Records contract to RCA Victor included five previously unissued songs he’d recorded for Sun). The result was that Cole had only four songs actually released on Atlas, the ballads “My Lips Remember Your Kisses” (written by Robert Scherman) and “Let’s Pretend” and the jazz tunes “Got a Penny, Benny” (vocals by Cole and the other...

by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2021 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved Last night’s 41st annual “A Capitol Fourth” concert on PBS was an interesting index into how much the fear of SARS-CoV-2 and the COVID-19 pandemic that virus started has receded. Just over a month before the analogous event, the National Memorial Day Concert, had taken place in what’s become the way we’ve expected during the viral pandemic, coming from various remote locations and held at a largely empty National Mall with all the participants masked except when they were actually talking or singing. This one was held before a big crowd at the Mall even though a lot of the individual segments were still coming in from remote locations, ranging from Los Angeles and San Francisco to the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, fabled original home of the Grand Ole Opry before it moved to “Opryland, U.S.A.,” what amounts to a country-music theme park. Unlike the National Memorial Day “Concert,” which I put in q...