There's a Santa who looks a lot like Elvis
The King of Rock and Roll
Take a look at the double chin
He's weighing about 310
With golden chains and sequined belt below

There's a Santa who looks a lot like Elvis
Down at the K-Mart store
But the scariest sight to see
Is that jolly VIP
In a pompadour

A pair of blue suede boots and a beard with black roots
And a face you knew way back when
A drawl in his talk and a swaggering walk
And the hips that wiggled back then
My mom and dad can barely wait to see the King again

He's a Santa who sounds a lot like Elvis
With every ho ho ho
There's that faint peanut butter smell
Whenever he says noel
Those lips are always twitching to and fro

There's a Santa who looks a lot like Elvis
Soon the band will start
And the thing that would pleasure Bing
Is a carol by the King
Right here in K-mart

You ain't nothing but a reindeer
Flying all the time
You ain't nothing but a reindeer
Flying all the time
Well you ain't never brought a present
And you ain't no friend of mine

Hey, we're here every day from 2 to 4. If you want to feed the reindeer just
leave `em a peanut butter and `nanner sandwich. They'll eat it later.

He's a Santa who looks a lot like Elvis
Well, thank you very much. Thank you.
Signs you can't ignore
Well, I have put on a few pounds
It's the wackiest thing to see
Buddy Holly's on his knee
Boy, you're a skinny little feller aren't you?
And I'm almost sure
Sure it's Elvis once more
Uh, ho ho ho, ho ho ho. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Mr. Rugani,

         Thank you for your wonderful Torch Hour.

A torch song is a sentimental love song, typically one in which the singer
laments an unrequited or lost love, either where one party is oblivious to the
existence of the other, where one party has moved on, or where a romantic affair
has affected the relationship.[1][2] The term comes from the saying, "to carry a
torch for someone", or to keep aflame the light of an unrequited love.

Torch singing is more of a niche than a genre, and can stray from the
traditional jazz-influenced style of singing, although the American tradition of
the torch song typically relies upon the melodic structure of the blues.

Thank You for making my Sundays enjoyable.

February 17, 2011

John Strauss, Composer of `Car 54' Theme, Dies at 90

By MARGALIT FOX

There's a holdup in the Bronx,

Brooklyn's broken out in fights.

There's a traffic jam in Harlem

That's backed up to Jackson Heights.

There's a scout troop short a child,

Khrushchev's due at Idlewild.

Car 54, where are you?

Ask almost anyone over 50, and the song pours buoyantly forth, evoking one of
television's best-loved comedies.

The lyrics, by Nat Hiken, the show's creator, capture New York in all its
frenzied geography. But they would never have been as singable - or as
enduringly etched in public memory - had they not been set to John Strauss's
jaunty march-time tune.

Mr. Strauss, an Emmy-winning composer and music editor who wrote the theme music
for "Car 54, Where Are You?" and "The Phil Silvers Show" (familiarly known as
"Sergeant Bilko"), died on Monday in Los Angeles. He was 90 and a longtime Los
Angeles resident.

The cause was complications of Parkinson's disease, his son, Larry, said.

Mr. Strauss received an Emmy for sound editing in 1978 for his work on the TV
movie "The Amazing Howard Hughes," and a Grammy in 1984 for producing the
soundtrack album of the film "Amadeus."

But it was for "Car 54" that he remained best known. Broadcast on NBC from 1961
to 1963, the show opens with its stars, Fred Gwynne and Joe E. Ross, blithely
cruising the city in their squad car (they can be seen playing checkers on the
dashboard as they drive), oblivious of the catastrophes erupting throughout the
city.

Melodically, the opening bars of Mr. Strauss's theme song recall the start of
the second movement of Mozart's G major Piano Trio (K. 564). As the song ends,
the title question hangs in the air in plaintive treble.

John Leonard Strauss was born in New York on April 28, 1920, and began piano
lessons as a boy. After Army service in France and North Africa in World War II,
he studied composition with Paul Hindemith at Yale.

"The Accused," a one-woman opera by Mr. Strauss with a libretto by Sheppard
Kerman, was broadcast in 1961 on "Camera Three" on CBS. Centering on the Salem
witch trials, the opera was conducted by Julius Rudel and sung by the soprano
Patricia Neway.

Mr. Strauss's marriage to the actress Charlotte Rae ended in divorce. His
partner afterward, Lionel Friedman, died in 2003. (Mr. Hiken died in 1968.)

Besides his son, Larry, Mr. Strauss is survived by three grandchildren.

His film credits, as music editor, include "Take the Money and Run," "Bananas,"
"Hair," "The Blues Brothers," "Zoot Suit" and "Ragtime."

Mr. Strauss was the music coordinator on "Amadeus," in which he also appeared
briefly on screen as a conductor, complete with powdered wig.

By STEPHEN HOLDEN, New York Times

Hugh Martin, the composer, lyricist, arranger and pianist best known for
creating the Judy Garland standards "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,"
"The Boy Next Door" and "The Trolley Song," died on Friday at his home in
Encinitas, Calif. He was 96.

His death was confirmed by his niece Suzanne Hanners.

The three songs with which he is most identified all belonged to the score of
the 1944 MGM musical "Meet Me in St. Louis." Although Mr. Martin shared
songwriting credit with his longtime collaborator, Ralph Blane, who died in
1995, Mr. Martin insisted in his autobiography, "Hugh Martin: The Boy Next Door"
(2010), that he had written all three songs by himself. Mr. Martin and Mr.
Blane, who met as cast members in the 1937 Broadway revue "Hooray for What?,"
both wrote words and music, usually independently of each other, before
combining their efforts, having agreed to share credit on everything.

Garland initially refused to sing the holiday ballad, which began, "Have
yourself a merry little Christmas/It may be your last," until that second line
was softened to "Let your heart be light." "They'll think I'm a monster to that
little Margaret O'Brien," he recalled her protesting.

"Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" is one of a triumvirate of achingly
wistful seasonal ballads from World War II (the others are "White Christmas" and
"I'll Be Home for Christmas") to have transcended their era. In his book
"American Popular Song: The Great Innovators, 1900-1950" the composer Alec
Wilder described it as "the most honest and genuine of all the attempts to wish
one well musically in a season which otherwise has come to be symbolized by
guilt and the dollar sign."

Mr. Martin wrote the music and lyrics for five Broadway musicals: "Best Foot
Forward" (1941, with Mr. Blane), "Look Ma, I'm Dancin'!" (1948), "Make a Wish"
(1951). "High Spirits" (1964, on which he collaborated with Timothy Gray on
book, music and lyrics) and the 1989 stage version of "Meet Me in St. Louis,"
for which he wrote new songs.

Besides "Meet Me in St. Louis" his film credits include the movie version of
"Best Foot Forward" (1943), "Abbott and Costello in Hollywood" (1945), "Athena"
(1954), "The Girl Rush" (1955) and "The Girl Most Likely" (1958), all with Mr.
Blane. On his own he wrote the songs for a 1958 television musical, "Hans
Brinker."

Born in Birmingham, Ala., on Aug. 11, 1914, Hugh Martin studied music at
Birmingham Southern College. He intended to be a classical musician until he
discovered George Gershwin.

" `Rhapsody in Blue' changed my life," he recalled in a conversation with the
singer and pianist Michael Feinstein in the liner notes for their 1995 album,
"The Hugh Martin Songbook."

"It was Gershwin and Kern and Arlen," he said. Those three were my top-echelon
people."

A letter he wrote to Richard Rodgers about vocal arrangements on Broadway earned
him an invitation to arrange "Sing for Your Supper" for the Rodgers and Hart
show "The Boys From Syracuse" in the style of the Boswell Sisters, and he began
a distinguished career as a Broadway and nightclub arranger.

While working with Garland on "A Star Is Born," he left the picture after a
dispute about how to sing "The Man That Got Away," which he didn't want her to
belt. As the musical director of "Sugar Babies" years later, he faced a similar
conflict about interpretation with Ann Miller.

His score for a movie short about the primitive artist Grandma Moses,
orchestrated by Mr. Wilder, became the semiclassical "New England Suite."

In his autobiography Mr. Martin wrote of his onetime amphetamine addiction, from
which he recovered. In his later years he became a Seventh-Day Adventist and an
accompanist for the gospel singer Del Delker, who recorded a religiously slanted
version of his holiday standard: "Have Yourself a Blessed Little Christmas."

Mr. Martin is survived by a brother, Gordon, of Birmingham.
======================
Sunday's MUSIC OF THE STARS will honor Hugh Martin and his works.

Randy Wood dies at 94; Dot Records founder was a music industry innovator

His practice of having white singers such as Pat Boone record black
artists' hits is credited by some with helping black musicians break into the
commercial mainstream.

By Valerie J. Nelson, Los Angeles Times

Dot Records founder Randy Wood was looking for a song for a young Pat Boone to
record in 1955 and found it in the Fats Domino hit "Ain't That a Shame?" Except
Boone, then an English major, wanted to sing "Isn't That a Shame?" After a few
run-throughs, Wood insisted, "It's got to be 'ain't'," and Boone soon had his
first No. 1 single.

Wood's practice of having white singers such as Boone cover rhythm and blues
hits by black artists is credited by some with helping black musicians - and
early rock music - break into the commercial mainstream. Pop stations that had
limited airplay mainly to white artists found room for the remakes, which helped
introduce the black R&B sound to a white
audience.

Wood died Saturday at his La Jolla home of
complications from injuries
sustained in a fall down stairs in his house, said his son John Wood. He was 94.

Calling him "one of the people I owe my career to," singer Pat Boone said Wood
"picked out all my early hits."

"He was just my mentor, my angel," Boone, who stayed with Dot Records for 13
years, told The Times in 2005.

The R&B remakes were not without controversy. Dot Records, Boone and other
singers were accused of stealing music and success from the black artists.

"That's a perversion of history," Boone said. "The recording directors at the
small R&B labels wanted to attract attention to their artists, and the covers
expanded the impact of the song. Little Richard, Fats Domino and Chuck Berry
were all thrilled, because it made it possible for their songs to finally get
heard, and Randy knew that."

At one point in the mid-1950s, Dot had five of the top 10 hits on the
Billboard charts, said Larry Welk, who is the son of the late bandleader
Lawrence Welk and first worked with Wood in 1960.

"He was a true pioneer in the music business," Welk said in a 2005 Times
interview. "He put in effect a lot of policies in the music business that will
outlive him."

One innovation included automatically shipping large numbers of a record
to distributors if Wood thought the song was a hit and guaranteeing that
the unsold ones could be returned, Welk said.

When Wood opened a small appliance store in 1945 in Gallatin, Tenn., he
stocked pop records, but customers kept asking for R&B. So Wood started a
mail-order business for the hard-to-find records and advertised it on a
late-night R&B show he put together for WLAC, a Nashville radio station with a
national presence.

"Randy's radio show played what were called 'race records' in those days, and he
knew what the huge black hits were," Welk said. "Since whites weren't buying
black hits, he'd be selling stuff through his
record shop and then he'd cover the same song with a white artist."

By 1950, the store had become Randy's Record Shop and was soon selling
almost 500,000 records a month. Wood also launched an independent record label
and named it Dot because it was "simple and easy to remember," his son said.

The first group to put Dot on the pop charts, in 1952, was a group made up of
mostly Western Kentucky College students who went by the school's nickname, the
Hilltoppers. Their first Dot record, "Tryin'," made it to No. 7.

Boone moved beyond recording covers and became Dot's most successful
artist, rivaling Elvis Presley's chart dominance.

The company also had other hits in the 1950s and '60s, including "Pipeline" by
the Surfaris, "Calcutta" by Lawrence Welk and "Melody of Love" by Billy Vaughn,
a Hilltopper who became Dot's musical director.

Dot's catalog was "totally eclectic," Wood's son said, and included a
"tremendous" number of black artists. "It went from Liberace to Louis
Armstrong, T-Bone Walker to Lawrence Welk."

Lawrence Welk told The Times in 1961 that his success as a recording
artist came only after Wood advised him "to record music that is more for
listening than dancing."

Wood's "radar" for hits was ever-present, Boone said.

At recording sessions, Wood would show up with three or four songs for Boone to
record.

"Most of them were pretty simple," Boone said. "Three hours later, we were
through and at least one of the records would be a million-seller."

From 1954 to 1956 Dot specialized in R&B cover records. The Fontane Sisters, who
had sung backup for Perry Como, had a gold record with "Hearts of Stone," which
had been recorded by several black artists. Among Boone's hits were remakes of
Little Richard's "Tutti Frutti" and the Charms' "Two Hearts."

After Wood saw actress Gale Storm sing on television he had her record R&B
covers, including Smiley Lewis' "I Hear You Knocking," which reached No. 2 in
1955.

Wood walked out of a Tab Hunter movie convinced that the actor's looks and teen
idol status would sell records. He had Hunter record "Young Love," which was
soon a No. 1 single in 1957. (Warner Bros. refused to let Hunter make any more
records for Dot because the studio said the actor, and his voice, were under
contract.)

Artists were loyal to Wood, who was known for being fair-minded.

"He certainly was one of the most ethical people I've ever met," Larry Welk
said. "He really cared about people and seeing them succeed."

Randolph Clay Wood was born March 30, 1917, in Morrison, Tenn. The only
child of two teachers, he built a crystal radio set when he was about 15 and
radio became "the love of his life," his son said.

He earned a bachelor's degree from Middle Tennessee State University in 1937 and
served as a radio communications officer in the Army Air Forces during World War
II.

Dot Records and the Wood family moved to Hollywood in 1956, and the company
became known for reissuing recordings by small independent labels, including
"Come Go With Me" by the Del Vikings and "From a Jack to a King" by Ned Miller.

In 1957, Paramount Pictures bought Dot, and Wood stayed on as president for a
decade. ABC bought Dot in 1974 and discontinued the label three years later.

Wood started another label, Ranwood Records, with Larry Welk in 1968. It became
the outlet for many artists associated with Lawrence Welk and remains in
business in Santa Monica.

Randy's Record Shop, which closed in 1991, has been designated a historical site
in Tennessee.

In addition to his son, John, a jazz pianist in Los Angeles, Wood is survived by
his wife of 69 years, Lois; another son, Larry, a teacher in Los Angeles; and a
daughter, Linda, a book publisher in La Jolla; three grandchildren; and one
great-grandchild.

Services are private.

valerie.nelson@...

Copyright 2011, Los Angeles Times

Norma Zimmer, singing and waltzing 'Champagne Lady' on Lawrence Welk's TV show,
dies at 87

By LYNN ELBER
AP Television Writer

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Norma Zimmer, the "Champagne Lady" of TV's "The Lawrence
Welk Show" and a studio singer who worked with Frank Sinatra and other pop
stars, has died. She was 87.

Zimmer died peacefully Tuesday at her Brea, Calif., home, Welk's son, Larry,
said Wednesday. Larry Welk didn't know the cause of death but said Zimmer had
been living an active life in recent years.

"She was one of the most gracious, likable people that anyone could ever meet.
The other people on the show, to this day, just respect and love her," Larry
Welk said.

Zimmer performed on Welk's network and later syndicated show from 1960 to 1982
as the "Champagne Lady," the title Welk traditionally gave to his orchestra's
lead female singer. Zimmer sang solos, duets with Jimmy Roberts and waltzed with
Welk to the strains of his effervescent dance tunes tagged "champagne music."

She appeared on the orchestra's public TV specials that have aired (along with
repeats of the series) since 1987. Zimmer took part in a tribute to Welk and his
show held earlier this year at the Paley Center for Media in Beverly Hills.

Welk, who stopped performing in 1989, died in 1992.

Zimmer, born in July 1923 in Larson, Idaho, grew up in Seattle. The petite
blonde sang with The Girlfriends, a quartet that performed with Sinatra, Dean
Martin and Bing Crosby, including on Crosby's famed recording of "White
Christmas."

Zimmer made several film and TV appearances, including one with Crosby in the
1950 film "Mr. Music" and in an episode of "I Love Lucy," and was the voice of
the White Rose in the 1951 Disney film, "Alice in Wonderland."

Her survivors include her sons, Ron and Mark. Her husband, businessman Randy
Zimmer, died in 2008.

Funeral services for Zimmer were pending.

  (Photo posted in our photo archives.)

LAS VEGAS (AP) - Bob Flanigan, an original member of the four-part jazz vocal
harmony group The Four Freshmen, has died in Las Vegas at age 84, a manager of
the group said Monday.

Flanigan died Sunday at home of congestive heart failure, with family members
nearby and several local trombonists playing songs, IVI Management agent Dina
Roth said.

"Flanigan's voice was indestructible," said Ross Barbour, the last remaining
original member of the four-man group. "He could drive all day and all night
without stopping between gigs, and when our voices were on the edge Bob was
still in full form."

Barbour, 82, now lives in Simi Valley, Calif.

Flanigan and his cousins Ross Barbour and Don Barbour formed the group in 1948
with Hal Kratzsch while attending Butler University in Indiana. Flanigan played
trombone and bass and sang lead parts.

Don Barbour died in a car crash in 1961. Kratzsch died in 1970.

The group produced more than 50 albums and 70 singles, and had six Grammy
nominations over the years, Roth said.

Best-known recordings were "It's a Blue World" in 1952, "Mood Indigo" in 1954,
"Day by Day" in 1955 and "Graduation Day" in 1956. The group was credited with
being an early influence on Beach Boys founder Brian Wilson.

Flanigan retired in 1992, but Roth said he kept a hand in the changing cast of
performers and management of The Four Freshmen name. The group's current cast -
Brian Eichenberger, Curtis Calderon, Vince Johnson and Bob Ferreira - are due to
perform Wednesday in Boston.

Flanigan is survived by his wife, Mary Flanigan, six children and 15
grandchildren. Memorial service plans were pending.

--- In MusicOfTheStars@yahoogroups.com, "LouRugani" <x779@...> wrote:
>
> LAS VEGAS (AP) - Bob Flanigan, an original member of the four-part jazz vocal
harmony group The Four Freshmen, has died in Las Vegas at age 84, a manager of
the group said Monday.
>
> Flanigan died Sunday at home of congestive heart failure, with family members
nearby and several local trombonists playing songs, IVI Management agent Dina
Roth said.
>
> "Flanigan's voice was indestructible," said Ross Barbour, the last remaining
original member of the four-man group. "He could drive all day and all night
without stopping between gigs, and when our voices were on the edge Bob was
still in full form."
>
> Barbour, 82, now lives in Simi Valley, Calif.
>
> Flanigan and his cousins Ross Barbour and Don Barbour formed the group in 1948
with Hal Kratzsch while attending Butler University in Indiana. Flanigan played
trombone and bass and sang lead parts.
>
> Don Barbour died in a car crash in 1961. Kratzsch died in 1970.
>
> The group produced more than 50 albums and 70 singles, and had six Grammy
nominations over the years, Roth said.
>
> Best-known recordings were "It's a Blue World" in 1952, "Mood Indigo" in 1954,
"Day by Day" in 1955 and "Graduation Day" in 1956. The group was credited with
being an early influence on Beach Boys founder Brian Wilson.
>
> Flanigan retired in 1992, but Roth said he kept a hand in the changing cast of
performers and management of The Four Freshmen name. The group's current cast -
Brian Eichenberger, Curtis Calderon, Vince Johnson and Bob Ferreira - are due to
perform Wednesday in Boston.
>
> Flanigan is survived by his wife, Mary Flanigan, six children and 15
grandchildren. Memorial service plans were pending.
>
---------------------------------------------------------------------
   Wonderful Tribute Bob Flanigan of the Four Freshmen.  I love their Music. 
Thanks for playing Great Music.

--- In MusicOfTheStars@yahoogroups.com, "Carol S" <cstrempler@...> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> MUSIC OF THE STARS
>
> GREAT ANNIVERSARY SHOW
>
> Music of the Stars is a Masterpiece of a collection
>
> of an erra that will always have a place in someones" heart.
>
> The mystical magic of Old Band sounds.
>
> For young and old. A story or song that rings a bell.
>
> You step into a different world and when you hear
>
> your Special Song, you go back in time.
>
> Maybe where you were, or who you were with.
>
> A time to step away to enjoy your favorite songs
>
> Like Bob Hope said Thanks for The Memories
>
> Once you meet Lou Rugani you have a Friend for Life.
>
>
> Thank you, Lou Rugani
>
> As Always, Carol Strempler
>
> "KEEP YOUR DREAMS ALIVE"
>
> Thanks for The Memories. Many More To Come.
>

Bill Finegan, who arranged hits for Glenn Miller and Tommy Dorsey and then
formed a big band with Eddie Sauter, another legendary arranger, that was famed
for skill, daring and very, very odd instruments, died on Wednesday, June 4,
2008 in Bridgeport, Conn. He was 91. The cause was pneumonia, said his son,
James.

Arrangers, the largely behind-the-scenes masterminds of the big-band era, took
compositions by bandleaders and others and refashioned them. Mr. Finegan heavily
arranged Miller's first big hit, "Little Brown Jug," and virtually everything he
recorded in 1938 and 1939. He later became a regular arranger for Dorsey.

After the swing era faded, Mr. Finegan started working with Mr. Sauter, who had
arranged for Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw, among others. Mr. Sauter died in
1981.

In forming the Sauter-Finegan Orchestra, the two envisioned an innovative kind
of music, defiant of convention but still inspired by musical traditions,
especially classical ones.

Wit was implicit, and unexpected instruments were the most conspicuous novelty.
These included the piccolo, flute, oboe, bass clarinet, harp, English horn,
recorder, tuba, glockenspiel, tympani, kazoo, xylophone and a marimba. In their
arrangement of "Troika" from Prokofiev's "Lieutenant Kije" suite, Mr. Finegan
conveyed the dull pounding of distant horses' hooves by beating out the rhythm
on his chest.

At the band's peak, 21 musicians played 77 instruments, not counting Mr.
Finegan's chest.

William James Finegan was born in Newark on April 3, 1917, and grew up loving
music almost as much as fishing. His son said he played the trumpet in high
school. After winning an amateur competition, his small high school jazz band
toured widely.

Dorsey was impressed with Mr. Finegan's arrangement of "Lonesome Road" and
recommended him to Miller, who hired him in 1938. In World War II, Mr. Finegan
served in the Army, then became an arranger for Dorsey.In 1947 and 1948, Mr.
Finegan studied with Stefan Wolpe, the avant-garde composer. From 1948 to 1950,
Mr. Finegan lived in Europe and studied at the Paris Conservatory. He began
corresponding with Mr. Sauter, who was in a sanitarium recovering from
tuberculosis, according to the Allmusic Internet guide. They mutually deplored
the state of popular music.

The two decided to team up, describing their plans in a statement for Down Beat
and Metronome magazines. They promised "pop music that is danceable, listenable
and lookable." They renounced the "too convenient rationalization to dub the
public as moronic."

They quickly produced a stream of compositions and arrangements and got a
recording contract from RCA Victor for some singles. They recruited a stable of
outstanding musicians.

Wally Kane, who played the clarinet, alto and baritone saxophone, bass clarinet,
flute and, later, bassoon for the group, described the informal approach of the
bandleaders in a telephone interview last week. There were no first, second or
third chairs; rather, every musician was given equal prominence. Each
arrangement was written with individual players in mind.

"Never since that experience have I been handed a piece of music with my name on
it," Mr. Kane said.

D.J.'s, desperate for fresh sounds, loved the band. Time magazine called it "the
most original band heard in the U.S. for years."

The orchestra, mostly known for recording, finally hit the road, but big bands
in general were dwindling. The group began a long decline, and in 1958 Mr.
Sauter and Mr. Finegan gave it up, except for occasional short-term revivals,
with both going on to various other music-related jobs.

"Everything went wrong but the music," Mr. Finegan once said.

Mr. Finegan's wife, the former Rosemary O'Reilly, died in 2001. In addition to
his son, James, of Monroe, Conn., Mr. Finegan was survived by his daughter Helen
Dzujna of Shelton, Conn. and three grandchildren.

SIMI VALLEY, Calif. (AP) - Ross Barbour, who was the last original member of the
influential 1950s harmonizing group the Four Freshmen, has died in Southern
California at 82.

The current group's manager, Dina Roth, tells the Los Angeles Times
(http://lat.ms/nUhR3D ) that Barbour had lung cancer and died Saturday at his
Ventura County home in Simi Valley.

Barbour's death comes three months after the death of another founding member,
his cousin, Bob Flanigan. The two other founding members were Barbour's brother,
Don Barbour, and Hal Kratzsch.

The Grammy-winning Four Freshmen's hits include "Graduation Day," ''It's a Blue
World," ''Mood Indigo," ''Day by Day," ''It Happened Once Before" and "How Can I
Tell Her?"

The group underwent many personnel changes over the years, with Ross Barbour
retiring from it in 1977.

Guest Book for Ross Barbour.

"My condolences to all of the families of the "Four Freshmen". I will never
forget sitting in 'STORYVILLE' at the Copley Square Hotel in the mid to late
'50's enjoying their show. I always had a great table. My landlady was a
waitress there and..."

James Towslee (Pownal, VT) "FRIDAY NIGHT SCHOOL DANCES TO THEIR MUSIC. THOSE
WERE THE DAYS. MANY THANKS ROSS AND THE FRESHMEN. REST IN PEACE." (LONG BEACH,
CA)
"My condolences to the Barbour family. May the words found at Job14:13-15 bring
you comfort."

Beth (GA)
"Condolences to the "Freshmen Family." High school was a wonderful time dancing
to all their music. The standards now are not the same and no group measures up
to the Four Freshman!!!!! Harmonize in Heaven!!!!!

Anne (Tinley Park)" "They absolutely set the standard. I used to drive 200 to
300 miles each way to see them and have every album, cd they did. Know every
arrangement by heart and once was asked to type a termpaper re: who sang the
bridge in Show Me the Way to Go..." Nona Long (Quincy, IL)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

We'll have a tribute to Ross on Sunday's Music of the Stars.

The effects of Music.

When mixed with the human mind and spirit, music is a potent force.

Sound in general has a direct connection to the emotional self. We don't merely
hear music. We feel it.

From our earliest subconscious recognition of rhythm - listening to our mothers'
beating hearts while still in the womb - music can be as vital and
life-sustaining as the blood in our veins. And because this medium is as
intertwined with the human soul as nature itself, it's no surprise that we
harbor strong opinions about what constitutes a good tune.

Music speaks to each of us in a very individual way, creating a connection that
is direct, personal and "mine." For many, it is almost as good a friend as any
person in their lives and, for some, it's better.

While some will swoon with delight to honky-tonk, rock or jazz, others will
grimace in pain. Some love all music, while others confine their preferences to
only a few genres, or one.

Debates about the best songs, musicians and arrangements rival the intensity of
heated verbal tussles over politics or religion. It's personal.

But why?

One reason is that music binds us with the very fabric of life itself. Certain
astral bodies, like quasars and black holes, give off "flicker noise," an
inaudible (to us) energy output with distinct musical attributes. And this
flicker noise is found in many aspects of nature, including brain waves, weather
patterns, magnetic fields and even the Earth itself, which gives off a "hum."

In their construction, songs bear strong similarities to mathematics, which is a
universal language "spoken" throughout the creation. In other words, music
permeates and expresses existence itself.

Science tells us that music lifts the human spirit. Research shows that, by
listening to the music that reaches their souls, the depressed become lifted up,
the anxious are soothed, the stymied are unstuck and the creative are unleashed.
And there is growing evidence that music can support physical healing, as well.

It unites us, weaving invisible bonds between people who, otherwise, would peer
at each other with wary eyes. And it does the same within the self, helping the
disjointed elements of a broken spirit come back together and hold hands for a
time.

For the sad, it explains their feelings in a way that words simply cannot. For
the happy, it broadens the smile and makes the feet a tad lighter. For the brain
made weary by testy people and hyper-stimulation, it is a refuge, a place to
piece one's sanity back together again.

What's more, music connects us with the mysteries inside ourselves and in the
whole of existence that escape description, which go beyond words or concepts.

As philosopher Aldous Huxley said, "After silence, that which comes nearest to
expressing the inexpressible is music."

Philip Chard is a psychotherapist, author and trainer.

Los Angeles -- Roger Williams, the virtuoso pianist who topped the Billboard pop
chart in the 1950s and played for nine U.S. presidents during a long career,
died Saturday. He was 87.

Mr. Williams died at his home in Los Angeles of complications from pancreatic
cancer, according to his former publicist Rob Wilcox.

Known as an electrifying stage performer and an adept improviser, Mr. Williams
effortlessly switched between musical styles.

Mr. Williams' 1955 hit "Autumn Leaves" was the only piano instrumental to reach
No. 1 on the Billboard pop charts. It remains the best-selling piano record of
all time, with more than 2 million sold.

Nicknamed the "pianist to the presidents," Mr. Williams played for every
commander in chief from Harry Truman to George H.W. Bush. His last trip to the
White House was in 2008, when he performed at a luncheon for then-first lady
Laura Bush.

Mr. Williams was good friends with Jimmy Carter, with whom he shared a birthday.
When the two men turned 80, Mr. Williams played a 12-hour marathon at the Jimmy
Carter Library and Museum in Atlanta, with the former president in attendance.

Born Louis Wertz in Nebraska, he started playing piano at age 3. By age 9 he was
prolific with several instruments and could play anything by ear.

As a teenager, he was given his own 15-minute radio show on KRNT, which was
broadcast live from a Des Moines, Iowa, department store. Later he hosted a
program on WHO, where he first met the station's young sports announcer, Ronald
"Dutch" Reagan. The two men started a friendship that lasted over 60 years.

Mr. Williams moved to New York to study jazz at the Juilliard School of Music.
He won performing contests on the popular radio shows "Arthur Godfrey's Talent
Scouts" and Dennis James' "Chance of a Lifetime."

Soon after, Mr. Williams was signed to Kapp Records, where founder Dave Kapp was
determined to find a hit for the young prodigy. Producers decided on a shortened
arrangement of "Autumn Leaves," which Mr. Williams recalled first clocked in at
three minutes and three seconds.

"In those days the disc jockeys would not play a record over three minutes long.
So Kapp asked if I could play the thirds a little faster. I did, and it came in
at two minutes and 59 seconds," Mr. Williams said, according to Wilcox.

It was an instant hit, and catapulted Mr. Williams to national renown. He
followed it up with a string of hits including "Born Free," "The Impossible
Dream," "Theme From Somewhere In Time," and "Lara's Theme from Dr. Zhivago."

Mr. Williams became a popular guest on the top television shows of the time
including "The Ed Sullivan Show," "The Perry Como Show" and "The Steve Allen
Show."

He is the first pianist to be honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
He also received the Lifetime Achievement Award from Steinway & Sons.

On his 75th birthday, Mr. Williams played a 12-hour marathon at Steinway Hall in
New York City, a stunt he repeated several time in the following years.

In March, Mr. Williams announced on his website that he had been diagnosed with
pancreatic cancer.

Mr. Williams is survived by his daughters, Laura Fisher and Alice Jung, and five
grandchildren.

This article appeared on page A - 20 of the San Francisco Chronicle

Pete Rugolo dies at 95; jazz arranger, composer

Pete Rugolo arranged for the Stan Kenton band after WWII and later wrote themes
for TV's 'The Fugitive' and 'Run for Your Life.'

Pete Rugolo won two Emmys — in 1970 for the TV movie "The Challengers" and in
1972 for an episode of "The Lawyers," which was one of the rotating elements of
"The Bold Ones" dramatic series. (Los Angeles Times)

By Dennis McLellan, Los Angeles Times

October 18, 2011

Pete Rugolo, an award-winning composer and arranger who came to prominence in
the world of jazz as the chief arranger for Stan Kenton's post-World War II band
and later wrote the themes for TV's "The Fugitive" and "Run for Your Life," has
died. He was 95.

Rugolo, who also had a recording career with his own band, died Sunday of
age-related causes at a nursing facility in Sherman Oaks,said his daughter, Gina
Rugolo Judd.

"Pete Rugolo's passing is a notable event, as he was a true and powerful
original, whose music made an invaluable contribution to a very rich period in
American music," composer John Williams said in a statement to The Times on
Monday.

As a composer and the chief arranger for Kenton from 1945 to 1949, Rugolo is
credited with being a major force in shaping the progressive jazz sound of the
Stan Kenton Orchestra.

"Big bands of the Swing Era were on their way out, and he came along and brought
this remarkable new life to that big band instrumentation," music critic Don
Heckman told The Times.

Rugolo won the DownBeat magazine poll as best arranger in 1947 — the first of
five wins as best arranger over the next seven years.

After leaving Kenton, Rugolo began a two-year stint as the musical director for
Capitol Records in New York, where he was responsible for discovering and
recording new acts.

"Bebop was just starting then, and I signed all the bebop players for Capitol,"
he recalled in a 1993 Times interview. "When their stars would come to New York
— Peggy Lee, Mel Torme — it was up to me to record them."

Among the artists Rugolo signed was Miles Davis, and he produced the famous
"Birth of the Cool" sessions with Davis' group.

But the Capitol job took too much time away from his main love: Writing music.

"I came out to Los Angeles to do a Nat Cole album and just decided to stay,"
said Rugolo, who recorded numerous albums with his own bands in the `50s while
also arranging and conducting recording dates for Billy Eckstine, June Christy,
Peggy Lee and others.

He was working as an arranger and orchestrator at MGM and was West Coast musical
director for Mercury Records when he broke into television in 1958 by writing a
new theme for "The Thin Man," the 1957-59 series starring Peter Lawford and
Phyllis Kirk.

He went on to write a new theme and music for "Richard Diamond: Private
Detective," the 1957-60 series starring David Janssen.

Among the shows he wrote themes and underscores for in the '60s are the Boris
Karloff-hosted anthology series "Thriller" and, most notably, Janssen's "The
Fugitive" and "Run for Your Life," starring Ben Gazarra — the latter series
earning Rugolo three consecutive Emmy nominations.

For his extensive work as a composer in television, Rugolo won two Emmys — in
1970 for the TV movie "The Challengers" and in 1972 for an episode of "The
Lawyers," which was one of the rotating elements of "The Bold Ones" dramatic
series.

"Pete Rugolo is one of only a handful of jazz writers to have made an immediate
splash in writing original music for television in the late '50s and early
'60s," said Jon Burlingame, author of "TV's Biggest Hits," a 1996 book that
chronicles the history of television themes.

"The trend starts in the fall of 1958 when 'Peter Gunn' goes on the air with a
Henry Mancini score," Burlingame said. "In 1959, Pete does 'Richard Diamond:
Private Detective' with equally compelling dramatic jazz."

But when "Thriller" debuted in the fall of 1960, Burlingame said, "Pete
demonstrated a broader talent for writing music of a dark, mysterious and
suspenseful tone."

Indeed, Rugolo's music for television extended far beyond jazz.

"'Richard Diamond' was a show written for a small jazz ensemble," Burlingame
said. "'The Fugitive' was written for a 55-piece symphonic orchestra. And that
alone, I think, demonstrates Pete's versatility as a composer."

Born in San Piero Patti, Sicily,on Dec. 25, 1915, Rugolo moved to the United
States in 1920 and settled in Santa Rosa, Calif. After earning a bachelor's
degree from San Francisco State College, he studied with avant-garde composer
Darius Milhaud at Mills College in Oakland.

He heard his first Kenton records during World War II while stationed at Ft.
Scott in San Francisco, where he was in charge of the Army band.

"I just loved the sound of the [Kenton] band," he recalled in the 1993 Times
interview. "I started copying the music down from the records and began writing
that way; my band sounded like a young Stan Kenton Orchestra."

When he discovered that Kenton's band would be playing at a San Francisco
theater, Rugolo took several of the best arrangements he had written in the
Kenton style backstage and gave them to Kenton.

A couple of months later, Rugolo received a phone call from Kenton, who had
finally been able to try the arrangements.

"He said, 'Gee, you write just like I do. As soon as you're out of the Army,
you've got a job.' It sounded like a fairy story."

In addition to his daughter, Gina, Rugolo is survived by his wife, Edye; his
sons, Pete Jr. and Tony; and three grandchildren.

A funeral will be held for immediate family only; a public remembrance will be
announced later.


Comments

downrightman at 6:07 PM October 20, 2011
The world has lost another great musician.  His work with Kenton, The Four
Freshmen, TV Shows, movies was excellent. A sad day for the Great American Music
Industry.
jazzguy at 9:14 AM October 18, 2011
I never had the pleasure of meeting Pete Rugolo in person, but I have had the
wonderful pleasure of listening to his music for most of my life. My earliest
memories are of my father playing his Stan Kenton records (78s-pre LP) and
telling me to listen to the great writing of Pete Rugolo. The music he wrote for
Kenton was harmonically advanced, perfectly orchestrated--a look into the
future. He continued to produce music at the highest levels for motion pictures
and television. Every musician I knew who also knew Pete were unanimous in their
praise for him as a person and as an extraordinary musical talent. He was not
just a great jazz/commercial composer-arranger, but a great individual.  Thank
you, Pete. You will be missed.
BillDoggett at 10:29 PM October 17, 2011
My condolences to the family.   I met him several times in the 1990s at
Butterfield and Butterfield auctions. Working with Edye Rugolo's Young Musicians
Foundation as a commercial photographer,  Edye allowed me to have one of the
rare 12" Kenton Progressive Jazz 78 sets showcasing Pete's compositions to be
signed by him.    VERY GIFTED and IMPORTANT compositional voice/arranger...    
RUGOLO is to KENTON as STAYHORN was to ELLINGTON.

Pete, may you rest in peace.    Cordially, Bill Doggett II
==============
We'll feature Pete's music for "Jack the Ripper" and "Boris Karoff's Thriller"
on the Music of the Stars for this Halloween.

Lou

Charles Hamm, Author on American Popular Music, Dies at 86
By ZACHARY WOOLFE

  Charles Hamm, who helped establish the field of American popular music history
with two books that have become standard texts, died on Oct. 16 in Lebanon, N.
H. He was 86. The cause was pneumonia, his son Stuart said.

After beginning his career as a specialist in Renaissance music, Mr. Hamm became
frustrated with the condescension of his fellow musicologists toward the popular
music of their own time. He began to write and lecture on the subject.

"There was no literature in my own discipline to guide me," he later recalled in
"Putting Popular Music in its Place," a 1995 collection of his essays. "My first
attempts were shots in the dark, guided only by the germ of a conviction that
popular music should be approached as a complex field encompassing composers,
performers, audiences, the music industry, the media and the state."

In "Yesterdays: Popular Song in America" (1979) and "Music in the New World"
(1983), Mr. Hamm was one of the first scholars to study the history of American
popular music with musicological rigor and sensitivity to complex racial and
ethnic dynamics, and both oral and written traditions. He traced pop's history
not just to its full recent flowering in the 1950s or to the 19th century and
Stephen Foster, but also to the colonial-era compositions that created the
context for all that followed.

His books "convinced other scholars to study and take seriously the music loved
by ordinary people," Dale Cockrell, the director of the Center for Popular Music
at Middle Tennessee State University, said in an e-mail.

Charles Edward Hamm was born in Charlottesville, Va., on April 21, 1925. In high
school he was a member of the band and the choir, and he played trombone in a
local swing band. He studied music at the University of Virginia, and earned
both a master's degree in composition and a Ph.D. in musicology from Princeton
University.

He taught at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music and was active as a composer,
with works that included a chamber opera, "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty"
(1956), based on the James Thurber story.

He went on to teach at Tulane, the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana
and Dartmouth, where he was named the Arthur R. Virgin professor of music in
1976 and served as chairman of the music department.

Mr. Hamm's books also included "Irving Berlin: Songs From the Melting Pot"
(1997), for which he received a Special Achievement Award from the American
Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, or Ascap, in 1998.

He published articles on the music of American avant-garde composers like John
Cage, on George Gershwin, and on the popular music of South Africa and China,
and was a contributor to the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians and the
Harvard Dictionary of Music.

In 1981 he was a founding member of the International Association for the Study
of Popular Music, and twice served as its chairman. In 2002 the Society for
American Music presented him with a Lifetime Achievement Award.

In addition to his son Stuart, he is survived by two other sons, Bruce and
Chris; a sister, Ruby; a brother, Jerry, and four grandchildren.

Jean Forward Baker sang the famous 'Salammbo' aria for Susan Alexander Kane
(Dorothy Comingore) in Citizen Kane. I was honored to be granted her first
interview ever on the Music of the Stars for Mothers Day in 2006.

With the 2007 death of Sonny Bupp ("Charles Foster Kane, Jr.") Ms. Baker is now
the last living cast member of 'Citizen Kane'.

Her daughter Sherryl Nelson gave us a nice photo of her Mom. It's posted here.

Here's a Scripps interview from last March:

===================

Camarillo woman, granddaughter have opera in their veins
By Mark Storer

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Jean Baker remembers the thrill of getting her first real singing gig.

"It was 1941 and I had auditioned in Hollywood, and RKO Pictures called me and
told me they had a movie they needed me for."

The Camarillo resident was asked to sing the parts for the character Susan
Alexander Kane played by Dorothy Comingore in Orson Welles' new film, "Citizen
Kane."

"They paid me $400 a week while they filmed. It was lip-syncing in a dark room
with headphones on watching the character and singing her lines," Baker said. "I
loved it."

After "Citizen Kane," Baker, who then went by her maiden name, Jean Forward, got
the opportunity to sing opera and never looked back.

"I sang Marguerite in the opera 'Faust' and it was a wonderful experience. That
was my entrée into that world," she said. She continued to sing in films and
with popular artists. She sang with Judy Garland in "Meet Me in St. Louis" and
with Lena Horne, as well. Music is a passion that Baker, who turned 90 in
February, has passed down through the generations in her family.

Susanna Lucarelli, 28, Baker's granddaughter, grew up with music in her veins.

"My mother, Sherryl Nelson, was the founding director of the Spivey Music Hall
in Georgia," Lucarelli said. "I was kind of like Eloise at the Plaza except I
grew up in a music hall and traveled the world with my mom, looking for great
musical acts to come perform," she said.

Baker helped raise Lucarelli.

"I feel like we're best friends separated by about 60 years," Lucarelli said.
"When I was 16, I was already singing in the commercial music business. I got to
sing with Taj Mahal and that opened up a lot of opportunities for me. Music is
the family business, I guess. It's what we do," she said.

But Lucarelli wasn't clear that her grandmother's passion for singing opera
would become her own. She majored in journalism and became the arts and
entertainment editor for the Moorpark College newspaper.

"But I wasn't satisfied. I didn't wake up wanting to do it," Lucarelli said. "I
was tired of writing about people who were following their passions."

While still singing whenever she could, Lucarelli managed a real estate office
in Westlake Village until the real estate bubble burst.

"I had a counselor at Moorpark named Michael Johnson, and he had always been a
great source of inspiration," she said. "He asked me if I was still singing and
when I told him I was, he said, 'Do what you love, Susanna. If you do what you
love, it will work,' and so I majored in music and I haven't looked back," she
said.

Lucarelli began to take the classes at Moorpark. While looking at YouTube videos
of classical performances, she came across an aria by Giacomo Puccini. "Until
then, I thought of classical music as my family's bag. I didn't see it as my
thing. But now, I'm discovering an absolute passion."

"I'm delighted," Baker said. "I can truly relate to what she went through, going
from popular to classical music," she said. "I'm her number one fan, and I'm so
proud of all she's doing."

Now studying with private vocal coach Gualtiero Negrini, Lucarelli has performed
with the Palm Springs Opera Guild and auditioned for the Metropolitan opera in
New York. Most recently, she auditioned at both USC and UCLA and also is
applying in various programs nationally.

While studying under professors Marilyn Anderson and Vail Keck at Moorpark
College, Lucarelli knew she had made the right choice during a 2009 performance
of Joseph Hayden's "The Creation."

"I was singing the part of Gabriel and I was backstage in the calm before the
storm, the darkness, and I thought 'This is what I'm meant for,'" she said.

© 2011 Scripps Newspaper Group

The Secret Garden carries broadcasts of the Music of the Stars throughout the
restaurant each Sunday morning and afternoon. It's located at 59th Place and
Sixth Avenue A overlooking Library Park. We're told they do a brisk business
with those who like a Sunday morning out but don't care to miss the program.

==============

Pat Yorton, who recorded for ABC-Paramount under the name Pat Scot, forwarded us
this poem written by a terminally ill young girl in a New York hospital:


SLOW DANCE

Have you ever watched kids
On a merry-go-round?
Or listened to the rain
Slapping on the ground?

Ever followed a
butterfly's erratic flight?
Or gazed at the sun into the fading night?

You better slow down.
Don't dance so fast.
Time is short.
The music won't last.

Do you run through each day
On the fly?
When you ask "How are you?",
Do you hear the reply?

When the day is done
Do you lie in your bed
With the next hundred chores
Running through your head?

You'd better slow down.
Don't dance so fast.
Time is short.
The music won't last.

Ever told your child
"We'll do it tomorrow"
And in your haste,
Not see his sorrow?

Ever lost touch,
Let a good friendship die
Cause you never had time
To call and say 'Hi'?

You'd better slow down.
Don't dance so fast.
Time is short.
The music won't last.

When you run so fast to get somewhere,
You miss half the fun of getting there.

When you worry and hurry
through your day,
It is like an unopened
gift....
Thrown away.

Life is not a race.
Do take it slower.
Hear the music
Before the song is over.

Max Steiner
Born Maximilian Raoul Steiner
May 10, 1888(1888-05-10)
Vienna, Austria-Hungary (now Austria)
Died December 28, 1971(1971-12-28) (aged 83)
Hollywood, California, USA
Occupation composer, arranger, conductor

Max Steiner (May 10, 1888 – December 28, 1971) was an Austrian composer of music
for theatre productions and films. He later became a naturalized citizen of the
United States. Trained by the great classical music composers Brahms and Mahler,
he was one of the first composers who primarily wrote music for motion pictures,
and as such is often referred to as "the father of film music".
Along with such composers as Franz Waxman, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Alfred
Newman and Miklós Rózsa, Steiner played a major part in creating the tradition
of writing music for films.

Steiner composed hundreds of film scores, including The Informer (1935), Now,
Voyager (1942), and Since You Went Away (1944), which won him Academy Awards. He
was nominated for the Academy Award a total of twenty-four times. He was also
the first recipient of the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score, which he
won for his score to Life with Father.

Steiner was one of the best-known composers in Hollywood, and is widely regarded
today as one of the greatest film score composers in the history of cinema. He
was a frequent collaborator with some of the most famous film directors in
history, including John Ford and William Wyler. Besides his Oscar-winning
scores, some of Steiner's popular works include King Kong (1933), Little Women
(1933), Jezebel (1938), Casablanca (1942), and the film score for which he is
possibly best known, Gone with the Wind (1939). Despite being one of the most
popular film soundtracks ever written, Gone with the Wind failed to win an Oscar
for him.

Max Steiner's birthplace in Vienna today, Praterstraße 72Steiner was born as
Maximilian Raoul Steiner in Austria-Hungary, in the Hotel Nordbahn (since 2008
Austria Classic Hotel Wien) on Praterstraße 72, in Vienna's Leopoldstadt.[2]
Steiner later claimed that he was given, and rejected, the name Walter, but
there is no evidence of this in his birth register, held at the Jewish community
of Vienna.[citation needed] Later in life he purportedly discovered a
half-brother named James Owen, with whom he co-wrote the song "Theme from A
Summer Place". His paternal grandfather was Maximilian Steiner (1830–1880), the
influential manager of Vienna's Theater an der Wien; his father was Gabor
Steiner (1858–1944), Viennese impresario and carnival and exposition manager,
responsible for the Ferris wheel in the Prater that would become the setting for
a key scene of the film The Third Man (1949); his godfather was the composer
Richard Strauss.

A child prodigy in composing, Steiner received piano instruction from Johannes
Brahms and, at the age of sixteen, enrolled at the Imperial Academy of Music
(now known as the University of Music and Performing Arts), where he was taught
by Gustav Mahler among others. His musical aptitudes enabled him to complete the
school's four-year program in only two. At the age of 16, Steiner wrote and
conducted the operetta The Beautiful Greek Girl. At the start of World War I, he
was working in London and was classified as an enemy alien but was befriended by
the Duke of Westminster and given exit papers. He arrived in New York City in
December 1914 with $32 to his name.

Steiner worked in New York for eleven years as a musical director, arranger,
orchestrator, and conductor of Broadway operettas and musicals written by Victor
Herbert, Jerome Kern, Vincent Youmans, and George Gershwin, among others.
Steiner's credits include: George White's Scandals (1922), Lady, Be Good (1924),
and Rosalie (1928).

In 1929, Steiner went to Hollywood to orchestrate the European film version of
the Florenz Ziegfeld show Rio Rita for RKO. The score for King Kong (1933) made
Steiner's reputation; it was one of the first American films to have an
extensive musical score (it was re-used in a number of RKO films, including Back
to Bataan.) He conducted the scores for several Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers
musicals, including Top Hat (1935) and Roberta (1935).

Steiner's first screen credit was an as orchestrator for the score of the 1930
film Dixiana. His first credit as a composer came the following year, for
Cimarron. He received his first two Oscar nominations for John Ford's 1934 film
The Lost Patrol, and the same year for The Gay Divorcee. He won his first Oscar
the following year for Ford's The Informer. At the time, the Oscar was awarded
to the head of the studio music department, not the composer, although in this
case that was Steiner anyway. The first person to win the award for Best
Original Score as a composer was Erich Wolfgang Korngold, who won for his work
on The Adventures of Robin Hood.

Steiner scored several films produced by RKO, the final of which was Follow the
Fleet. He left RKO in 1936 and soon became the musical director of Selznick
International Pictures.

In April 1937, he signed a long-term contract with Warner Bros., and the same
year composed the famous fanfare which introduced pictures produced by the
studio, although this is no longer in use (curiously, this was never used for
the studio's television productions).

In 1939, Steiner was borrowed from Warner Bros. by David O Selznick to compose
the score to Gone with the Wind. He was given only three months to compose a
large amount of music for the film, whilst at the same time scoring We Are Not
Alone, Dark Victory and Four Wives for Warner. Gone with the Wind and Dark
Victory both earned him Academy Award nominations; however, he lost to the score
of The Wizard of Oz by Herbert Stothart. Along with Clark Gable, Steiner was one
of the few nominees for Gone with the Wind that did not win. Many feel that
Steiner deserved the award. The score was ranked by the AFI as the second
greatest American film score of all time.

Steiner received his next Oscar nomination for the 1940 film The Letter, his
first of several collaborations with legendary director William Wyler. A further
nomination followed the next year for Sergeant York. In 1942, Steiner won his
second Oscar for Now, Voyager, and was also nominated for Casablanca, which
remains one of his most famous scores. He received his third and final Oscar in
1944 for Since You Went Away.

Steiner's pace slowed significantly in the mid-1950s, and he began freelancing.
In 1954, RCA Victor asked Steiner to prepare and conduct an orchestral suite of
music from Gone with the Wind for a special LP, which was later issued on CD.
There are also acetates of Steiner conducting the Warner Brothers studio
orchestra in music from some of his film scores.

Steiner reunited with John Ford in 1956 to score The Searchers, widely
considered the greatest western ever made. He returned to Warner-Bros in 1958
(although his contract ended in 1953) and scored several films, in addition to a
rare venture into television composing a library of music for the fourth season
of Hawaiian Eye. He continued to score films produced by Warner until the mid
sixties.

Steiner's final original score was for the 1965 film Two on a Guillotine. He
worked on over 300 films, sometimes as a composer, sometimes as an
arranger/conductor, and often as both.

In 1963, Steiner began writing his autobiography, which, although completed, was
never published, and is the source of a few biographical errors concerning this
composer. A copy of the manuscript resides with the rest of the Max Steiner
Collection at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah.

Max Steiner died of congestive heart failure in Hollywood, aged 83. He is
entombed in the Great Mausoleum at Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in
Glendale, California.

After his death, Charles Gerhardt conducted the National Philharmonic Orchestra
in an RCA Victor album of highlights from Steiner's career, titled Now Voyager.
Additional selections of Steiner scores were included on other RCA classic film
albums during the early 1970s. The quadraphonic recordings were later digitally
remastered for Dolby surround sound and released on CD.
In 1995, Steiner was inducted posthumously into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. He
has a star located at 1551 Vine Street on the Walk of Fame for his contribution
to motion pictures.

In commemoration of Steiner's 100th birthday a memorial plaque was revealed by
Helmut Zilk, then Mayor of Vienna, in 1988 at Steiner's birthplace, the Hotel
Nordbahn (now Austria Classic Hotel Wien) in Praterstraße 72.

The American Film Institute respectively ranked Steiner's scores for Gone with
the Wind (1939) and King Kong (1933) #2 and #13 on their list of the 25 greatest
film scores. His scores for the following films were also nominated for the
list:

Adventures of Don Juan (1948)
Casablanca (1942)
Dark Victory (1939)
The Informer (1935)
Jezebel (1938)
Johnny Belinda (1948)
Now, Voyager (1942)
A Summer Place (1959)
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)
[edit] Additional filmography
The Bondman (1929) (uncredited)
Rio Rita (1929) (uncredited)
The Case of Sergeant Grischa (1930) (uncredited)
Dixiana (1930) (as Orchestrator - first screen credit)
Cimarron (1931)
What Price Hollywood? (1932)
Bird of Paradise (1932)
The Most Dangerous Game (1932)
A Bill of Divorcement (1932)
Thirteen Women (1932)
The Half-Naked Truth (1932)
The Animal Kingdom (1932)
Christopher Strong (1933)
Rafter Romance (1933)
King Kong (1933)
Son of Kong (1933)
Little Women (1933)
Morning Glory (1933)
Flying Down to Rio (1933) (as Musical Director)
The Lost Patrol (Academy Award nomination, 1934)
Of Human Bondage (1934)
The Fountain (1934)
The Age of Innocence (1934)
The Gay Divorcee (as Musical Director) (Academy Award nomination, 1934)
Anne of Green Gables (1934)
The Little Minister (1934)
Roberta (1935) (as Musical Director)
The Informer (1935) (Academy Award winner)
She (1935)
Top Hat (1935) (as Musical Director)
The Three Musketeers (1935)
Follow the Fleet (1936) (as Musical Director)
Little Lord Fauntleroy (1936)
The Garden of Allah (Academy Award nomination, 1936)
The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936)
A Star Is Born (1937)
Kid Galahad (1937)
Nothing Sacred (1937) with Oscar Levant and Alfred Newman
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) (uncredited)
That Certain Woman (1937)
The Life of Emile Zola (1937)
Tovarich (1937) (first use of the Warner Bros. fanfare, composed by Steiner)
Gold is Where You Find It (1938)
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1938)
Jezebel (Academy Award nomination, 1938)
Crime School (1938)
Four Daughters (1938)
The Sisters (1938)
Angels with Dirty Faces (1938)
The Dawn Patrol (1938)
The Oklahoma Kid (1939)
Dodge City (1939)
Dark Victory (Academy Award nomination, 1939)
Confessions of a Nazi Spy (1939)
The Old Maid (1939)
The Wizard of Oz (1939) (replaced by Herbert Stohart)
Gone with the Wind (Academy Award nomination, 1939)
Virginia City (1940)
All This, and Heaven Too (1940)
The Letter (Academy Award nomination, 1940)
Santa Fe Trail (1940)
City for Conquest (1940)
Shining Victory (1941)
They Died with Their Boots On (1941)
Sergeant York (Academy Award nomination, 1941)
Casablanca (Academy Award nomination, 1942)
Now, Voyager (1942) (Academy Award winner)
Captains of the Clouds (1942)
Since You Went Away (1944) (Academy Award winner)
The Adventures of Mark Twain (Academy Award nomination, 1944)
Mildred Pierce (1945)
Rhapsody in Blue (Academy Award nomination, shared with Ray Heindorf, 1945)
A Stolen Life (1946)
The Big Sleep (1946)
Night and Day (Academy Award nomination, shared with Ray Heindorf, 1946)
The Unfaithful (1947 film)
Life with Father (Academy Award nomination, 1947)
My Wild Irish Rose (Academy Award nomination, shared with Ray Heindorf, 1947)
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)
Key Largo (1948)
Winter Meeting (1948)
Johnny Belinda (Academy Award nomination, 1948)
The Lady Takes a Sailor (1949)
Beyond the Forest (Academy Award nomination, 1949)
The Fountainhead (1949)
The Flame and the Arrow (Academy Award nomination, 1950)
The Glass Menagerie (1950)
Jim Thorpe -- All-American (1951)
Operation Pacific (1951)
The Miracle of Our Lady of Fatima (Academy Award nomination, 1952)
The Jazz Singer (Academy Award nomination, shared with Ray Heindorf, 1953)
So Big (1953)
The Charge at Feather River
The Caine Mutiny (Academy Award nomination, 1954)
Battle Cry (Academy Award nomination, 1955)
The Last Command (1955)
The Searchers (1956)
Death of a Scoundrel (1956)
Band of Angels (1957)
A Summer Place (1959) (Theme U.S.#1 Hit Single)
The FBI Story (1959)
The Dark at the Top of the Stairs (1960)
Ice Palace (1960)
Parrish (1961)
Spencer's Mountain (1963)
Youngblood Hawke (1964)
A Distant Trumpet (1964)
Two on a Guillotine (1965)
Those Calloways (1965)


"Max Steiner - Father of Film Music"

Leonard Pitts wrote:

"You might call this a requiem for reverence.

It speaks also to an overriding shallowness, an obsession with the superficial
and trivial that seems unfortunately characteristic of this era. One can hardly
get through the day anymore without feeling that.

Reverence dies repeatedly in a nation where ironic distance and postmodern
cynicism are worn like armor to protect against the possibility one might
accidentally feel something profound or hear some deep, affecting truth.

What a difference a generation makes. Maybe you are old enough to remember when
"reverence" became passe and its antonym, "irreverence," became the byword of
American culture. Like a blast of cold air into a stifling room, it blew away
the tyranny of the excessively earnest and the stiffly proper, refused to bow
before cobwebbed notions of propriety, skewered sacred cows with infectious
abandon.

It was culture as dividing line, the bright Rubicon between Bob Hope and Lenny
Bruce, Henry Fonda and Jane Fonda, Bing Crosby and Funkadelic. In a real sense,
it represented the liberating of the American mind.

But decades later, it sometimes feels as if irreverence has instituted a tyranny
all its own, a ban against holding anything above the fray, or regarding
anything as too sacred for too long. Worse, this new tyranny seems to portend
less the liberating of the American mind than the calcifying of the American
heart against the very notion of sacred things, a profound unseriousness, a
sense of emotional retardation unworthy of grownup people."

Leonard Pitts Jr. is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Miami Herald.
Read more here:
http://www.thenewstribune.com/2012/01/22/1993635/we-have-transitioned-to-a-natio\
n.html#storylink=cpy

On February 08, 2001, Greg Kot, Chicago Tribune, wrote:

Eminem's "Marshall Mathers LP" ... had been nominated for four Grammy awards,
including album of the year. Even though I loathe the album for its violently
misogynist and homophobic lyrics, I found myself on the defensive from callers
who not only hate Eminem but rap music in general  ... Caller after caller to
the radio show questioned my sanity. "How can you even use the words 'rap' and
'music' in the same sentence?" one caller railed.

Last week, a similar note of outraged indignation was struck by an opinion piece
that appeared in The New York Times. It was written by Bob Herbert, a member of
the paper's editorial board, who not only castigated Eminem's Grammy nomination
- "Only a lunatic could think this was the finest album of the year" - but also
condemned rap as a whole. "My problem with rap," he wrote, "especially in its
most grotesque forms, is that it has so thoroughly broken faith with the
surpassingly great, centuries-long tradition of black music in America. With
rap, both the music and the poetry have vanished. In their place, we get, for
the most part, infantile rhymes, and sometimes not even rhymes - just
gibberish." Then, referring to the way Eminem has exploited this bankrupt
tradition to the fullest, he concludes, "A steady diet of this ugliness is
poisonous, the equivalent of developing one's self-image by looking in a
toilet."

... it has now become a mainstream marketing formula with outlandishly explicit
tales of drugs, guns and prostitutes. Just as the movie industry continues to
churn out plot-starved, caricature-riddled action films high on mayhem and low
on creative ambition, the most commercially successfully hip-hop panders to
young suburban males with wisecracking pathology and shallow shock lyrics.

Eminem is the twisted poster child for this movement, and his stunning success
is what alarms serious-thinking adults such as the Times' Herbert. "The Marshall
Mathers LP" has sold more than 7 million copies and heavily edited versions of
explicit songs such as "The Real Slim Shady" have been played as much as 70
times a week on major commercial pop stations. This ubiquity has led Herbert to
conclude that rap has lost whatever moral compass it might have had.

The Music of John Williams

SILVA SCREEN RECORDS MARKS COMPOSER JOHN WILLIAMS' 80th BIRTHDAY WITH
COMPREHENSIVE SET

The Music Of John Williams - The Definitive Collection Features 87 Tracks With
Over 7 Hours of Music.

Since 1972, when he won his first Oscar, John Williams has received 47 Oscar
nominations including 5 wins, 2 Emmys, 3 Golden Globes, 7 BAFTAs and more then
twenty Gold and Platinum Records. Today, he is one of the most respected and
acclaimed composers in Hollywood.

Perhaps the film composer of the biggest number of instantly recognizable themes
and motifs, John Williams's immense musical output has now secured him a
"cultural icon" status.  On February 8th this icon turns 80.

2012 also marks 40 years since John Williams and Steven Spielberg first met and
started a hugely successful collaboration lasting to this day. Spielberg's
composer of choice, Williams penned the unforgettable music for Jaws,
Schindler's List, the four Indiana Jones films, E.T., Saving Private Ryan, as
well as now classic themes for the Star Wars series, Superman and the first
three Harry Potter films.

The immense quantity and quality of John Williams's film scores has propelled
his work into the top All-Time Worldwide Box Office films list - he scored 16 of
them, more than any other composer. In 2005, the American Film Institute
unveiled its list of the Top 25 Film Scores of all time and John Williams
appears at #1 (Star Wars), # 6 (Jaws) and # 14 (E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial).

"John certainly has the most considerable impact because his music immediately
bypasses the brain and goes straight to your heart. That's the way he's always
been... an amazing talent."
- Steven Spielberg

The collection is performed by The City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra.
CD and Digital Album: SILCD 1382
Release Date: Feb. 21, 2012

###

Silva Screen Records is one of the world's leading film and television
soundtrack labels, based in London, with offices in New York and Paris. Founded
in 1986, the label boasts a catalogue of over 500 titles and over 10,000 master
recordings including the six bestselling score albums of the music from the
current Doctor Who TV revival, the Gerry Anderson catalogue (Thunderbirds,
Captain Scarlet), the Roy Budd catalogue (Get Carter, Fear is the Key, Wild
Geese), and reissues of classics such as John Barry's score for The Ipcress File
and the music for the cult film The Wicker Man.

ABOUT THE CITY OF PRAGUE PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA:

The City Of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra was founded in 1947, performing music
for film, television and animation productions at the Barrandov Film Studios in
Prague, the historic Krátký Film productions and the former Czechoslovak
Television.

After the so-called `Velvet Revolution' in 1989, the orchestra was privatized
and has since recorded scores for major film production entities including
Paramount, Sony, and Lucasfilm, and recorded the scores for David Lynch's Lost
Highway (1997) and Mulholland Drive (2001), Pedro Almodóvar's All About My
Mother (1999), Roman Polanski's The Ninth Gate (1999), Florian Henckel von
Donnersmarck's The Lives Of Others (2006) and Saul Dibb's The Duchess (2008).

His 60-year career in music sprang out of Waukegan Township High School, where
he studied under the direction of Otto Graham Sr., father of the NFL Hall of
Fame quarterback.

He would go on to form his own trio at age 18, eventually playing with Liberace
at Lake Tahoe and entertaining the troops with Bob Hope.

And if you young people go on YouTube right now and search for "Charlie's Angels
Yodel," you will see a 39-second clip from the 2000 action movie that features
Drew Barrymore, Cameron Diaz, Lucy Liu and Bill Murray performing an oom-pah
tune written by Waukegan's own Frank Marocco.

In fact, Marocco has more than two dozen film credits to his name at the
Internet Movie Database, playing his accordion on the soundtracks of
"Ratatouille" (2007), "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End" (2007),
"Something's Gotta Give" (2003) and "Midnight Run" (1988).

Marocco passed away on March 3rd, 2012, closing a quiet but impressive success
story that ranks him among the more notable entertainers to hail from Waukegan.

"Frank Marocco left us (Saturday evening) in Los Angeles at the age of 81," read
a statement posted by his manager, Elke Ahrenholz, at frankmarocco.com. "His
music will always be with us, and it was a great privilege to know this
incredible musician and work with him. He was my best friend, my inspiration, my
mentor, and I will always honor him."

Faded yellow clips from The News-Sun archives record that the year before
Marocco graduated from high school in 1949, he won first place among accordion
players at Soldier Field's Chicago Music Festival. He qualified for that
competition at no less than the 1948 Waukegan News-Sun Music Festival.

By 1955, the "boy prodigy on the accordion" had formed the Frank Marocco Trio
with fellow Waukegan native Gordon Lofgren on bass and Jerry Holton of Kenosha
on guitar. By the early 1970s, he was a featured performer with Les Brown and
His Band of Reknown.

Other musical giants Marocco worked with over the years include Burt Bacharach,
Elmer Bernstein, Quincy Jones, Henry Mancini and John Williams. But his
working-class roots never left him, as indicated by his response when asked for
a musical philosophy:

"Although I've made a comfortable living, my primary goal has never been to make
a lot of money. It has been to be the best I could possibly be. This takes
integrity, hard work and dedication. You must have respect for what you do."

MUSIC LOSES ANOTHER STUDIO LEGEND

from allabout jazz.com

WARREN LUENING

Warren Luening's trumpet and flugelhorn work from
Lawrence Welk to Bob Florence to the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra to soundtrack
recording at the studios, where
he was revered as one of best players and best guys in the building, died March
18th of complications from
cancer. He was 70 years of age.

Warren Luening, Jr. born and bred in New Orleans, where many outsiders have
sought to imitate that sound which comes so naturally to those who grew up
exposed to the Big Easy's street music traditions. He had an early start with
music, playing in a youth band, together with Roy Wiegand, Charlie May, and a
rhythm section. They performed in 'The Colgate Comedy Hour' on C.B.S., as well.
The youth band worked 6 nights a week.

Tony Almerico's All-Stars, a mixture of seasoned New Orleans
men and the town's vigorous younger generation, became a
fixture at the Parisian Room on Royal Street for years. Joining Almerico in the
front line were three of the young stars who are carrying on the vital
traditions of New Orleans jazz. Pete
Fountain anexceptional clarinetist with the rich, mellow tone that is the
hallmark of the great New Orleans clarinet men, trumpeter Warren Luening, Jr.,
and clarinetist "Pee Wee" Spitelera. The other horns in Almerico'sband, Jack
Delaney, a trombonist and singer who is the closest thing to Jack Tea-garden
since
Teagarden himself, and tenor saxophonist Nino Picone.

Luening moved on to playing trumpet with the Lawrence Welk Orchestra for a few
years (1958 to 1960) during the Silver Champagne Era. In the late 1960s he
performed with the Ronnie Dupont Quartet, featuring Warren Luening (trumpet),
Roy Wiegand (trombone), Johnny Vidacovich (drums) at The Bistro Nightclub in New
Orleans.

He played with the orchestra on "Dancing with the Stars"
(TV series), the EMMY and Oscars Awards.

Marion Marlowe passed away on Saturday, March 24, 2012.

Born on March 7, 1929, Marion was an American singer and actress. She died at
the age of 83 in Tucson, Arizona of natural causes.

She was born Marion Townsend in St. Louis, Missouri and was best known for her
performances on the television variety series "Arthur Godfrey and His Friends"
from 1950 to 1955 in which she sang duets with Frank Parker as the "Jeanette
MacDonald and Nelson Eddy of the 1950s.".

According to Richard Lamparksi's 1975 book "Whatever Became of...?", Marion
began taking vocal lessons when she was twelve years old and studied at London's
Royal Conservatory under Sir Thomas Beecham. Later, she roomed with Marilyn
Monroe at Hollywood's Studio Club while being coached by Sigmund Romberg. She
recorded for CBS Records in the mid-1950s, and had a hit single with "The Man in
the Raincoat", which reached #14 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1955. In April 1955
she was dropped from CBS's roster, and the same month she was fired by Arthur
Godfrey from his show along with Haleloke and the Mariners; the following month
she married television producer Larry Puck, who had also been fired by Godfrey.
She later pursued a career as a stage actress, most notably as the Baroness,
Elsa Schraeder, in The Sound of Music, 1959-1963.

Marion was a widow living in California, enjoying organic garden and caring for
the stray animals she took in.

Thank you for the Great Presentation of the loss of this Great Ship. 
Your show was put together like a movie. Enjoyed all the music and stories.
Sometimes it's hard to beleive that it actually took place.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Bandleader Wallace Hartley, 33, and his musicians played lively ragtime tunes
while the lifeboats were lowered and continued until the ship went under. None
attempted to get into a lifeboat and none survived.


  Among the passengers was Isidor Straus, the owner of Macy's, the world's
largest department store, and his wife Ida. When women were being loaded onto
the lifeboats, she hesitated and then stepped back.

"We have been living together for many years," she said to her husband. "Where
you go, I go." Calmly, the two of them sat down in deck chairs and waited. A
huge wave washed them into the ocean. Isidor's body was later recovered and
shipped to New York. Ida's body was never recovered.

John Jacob Astor, IV, 47, the recently divorced and extremely wealthy
businessman and real estate investor, was returning from his honeymoon with his
18-year-old pregnant new wife, Madeleine.

Astor assisted his young wife into a lifeboat and then asked if he could join
her. His request was denied as he watched the boat drop away two-thirds full. He
went off to await his fate. His body was recovered later, identified by the
embroidered initials in his shirt.

Benjamin Guggenheim, member of a prominent mining family, was accompanied by his
mistress, his valet, chauffeur, a maid, and others. He slept through the
collision with the iceberg but was awakened by his valet. Fitted with a lifebelt
and heavy sweater, he was sent with the ladies to the boat deck.

After the women boarded he returned to his cabin where he changed into formal
evening wear. He declared that if he was going to perish he wanted to do so like
a gentleman. He and his valet were last seen on the grand staircase sipping
brandy and smoking cigars. Their bodies were never recovered.

Two Roman Catholic priests were on board and held Mass for second and third
class passengers during the voyage. Father Thomas Byles, 42, helped third-class
passengers up stairs and into the boats, heard confessions, and prayed with
those unable to escape.

John George "Jack" Phillips, 25, was the chief wireless operator and remained at
his post flashing signals calling for assistance until the ship went under.

Similarly, Chief Engineer William Bell and a few crewmen kept the steam up in
the boiler rooms so that the ship lights would remain lit and there would be
power to keep the pumps going until the very end.

There's uncertainty and controversy over Captain Edward Smith's actions during
this disaster. Did he fail to heed warnings of icebergs? Was he too interested
in increasing speed? Should he have been better prepared for the emergency?
Continued...



  Many accounts report that he made his way to the wireless room and told the
operators they had done their duty and it was now every man for himself. He was
last seen on the bridge and went down with his ship.

The youngest passenger on board was 2-month-old Millvina Dean who, with her
parents and older brother, was emigrating from England to Kansas. She was placed
with her mother and brother in a lifeboat. Her father perished and was never
found. She died in 2009, age 97, the last survivor of the Titanic disaster.

Frederick Fleet was the lookout who alerted First Officer William Murdoch that
there was an iceberg. Murdoch ordered the ship's engines into reverse but it was
too late. Fleet was ordered to help with the lifeboats and survived the sinking.

In World War I he served in the merchant marine and after on the Titanic's
sister ship "Olympic." He suffered from guilt his entire life because he lived
while so many perished. His wife died after Christmas 1964 and two weeks later
he committed suicide by hanging himself. He is often referred to as the last
victim of the Titanic.

Clinton artist Marek Sarba has memorialized those individuals who perished in
the Titanic disaster with illustrations of 57 individuals descending the Grand
Staircase.

Sarba was born in Warsaw and went to work in the Polish seaport of Gdansk where
he worked for 24 years as an electrical engineer in the shipyards. He and his
wife Barbara came to the U.S. more than 30 years ago. While working in a
shipyard in Florida he saw an exhibit of the artifacts recovered by Robert
Ballard's historic discovery of the Titanic.

Now recognized as an accomplished maritime artist with his soattempted to get
into a lifeboat and none survived.

Among the passengers was Isidor Straus, the owner of Macy's, the world's largest
department store, and his wife Ida. When women were being loaded onto the
lifeboats, she hesitated and then stepped back.

"We have been living together for many years," she said to her husband. "Where
you go, I go." Calmly, the two of them sat down in deck chairs and waited. A
huge wave washed them into the ocean. Isidor's body was later recovered and
shipped to New York. Ida's body was never recovered.

John Jacob Astor, IV, 47, the recently divorced and extremely wealthy
businessman and real estate investor, was returning from his honeymoon with his
18-year-old pregnant new wife, Madeleine.

Astor assisted his young wife into a lifeboat and then asked if he could join
her. His request was denied as he watched the boat drop away two-thirds full. He
went off to await his fate. His body was recovered later, identified by the
embroidered initials in his shirt.

Benjamin Guggenheim, member of a prominent mining family, was accompanied by his
mistress, his valet, chauffeur, a maid, and others. He slept through the
collision with the iceberg but was awakened by his valet. Fitted with a lifebelt
and heavy sweater, he was sent with the ladies to the boat deck.

After the women boarded he returned to his cabin where he changed into formal
evening wear. He declared that if he was going to perish he wanted to do so like
a gentleman. He and his valet were last seen on the grand staircase sipping
brandy and smoking cigars. Their bodies were never recovered.

Two Roman Catholic priests were on board and held Mass for second and third
class passengers during the voyage. Father Thomas Byles, 42, helped third-class
passengers up stairs and into the boats, heard confessions, and prayed with
those unable to escape.

John George "Jack" Phillips, 25, was the chief wireless operator and remained at
his post flashing signals calling for assistance until the ship went under.

Similarly, Chief Engineer William Bell and a few crewmen kept the steam up in
the boiler rooms so that the ship lights would remain lit and there would be
power to keep the pumps going until the very end.

There's uncertainty and controversy over Captain Edward Smith's actions during
this disaster. Did he fail to heed warnings of icebergs? Was he too interested
in increasing speed? Should he have been better prepared for the emergency?

Many accounts report that he made his way to the wireless room and told the
operators they had done their duty and it was now every man for himself. He was
last seen on the bridge and went down with his ship.

The youngest passenger on board was 2-month-old Millvina Dean who, with her
parents and older brother, was emigrating from England to Kansas. She was placed
with her mother and brother in a lifeboat. Her father perished and was never
found. She died in 2009, age 97, the last survivor of the Titanic disaster.

Frederick Fleet was the lookout who alerted First Officer William Murdoch that
there was an iceberg. Murdoch ordered the ship's engines into reverse but it was
too late. Fleet was ordered to help with the lifeboats and survived the sinking.

In World War I he served in the merchant marine and after on the Titanic's
sister ship "Olympic." He suffered from guilt his entire life because he lived
while so many perished. His wife died after Christmas 1964 and two weeks later
he committed suicide by hanging himself. He is often referred to as the last
victim of the Titanic.

Clinton artist Marek Sarba has memorialized those individuals who perished in
the Titanic disaster with illustrations of 57 individuals descending the Grand
Staircase.

Sarba was born in Warsaw and went to work in the Polish seaport of Gdansk where
he worked for 24 years as an electrical engineer in the shipyards. He and his
wife Barbara came to the U.S. more than 30 years ago. While working in a
shipyard in Florida he saw an exhibit of the artifacts recovered by Robert
Ballard's historic discovery of the Titanic.

Now recognized as an accomplished maritime artist with his sought-after work
displayed at Mystic Seaport's Maritime Gallery, Mariner's Museum in Newport
News, the Merchant Marine Museum in Kings Point and elsewhere, Sarba says the
Titanic discovery "ignited me."

"I worked for bread but once in a while have a piece of cake," he said referring
to his interest in the Titanic and his love of painting.

He began by meticulously examining photographs and 1912 newspaper images to draw
portraits and then added their bodies. All individuals are actual depictions
except for the little boy who represents the third class passengers.

Of Days Gone By - by Art Kumbalek

(Shepherd Express, June 10, 2010)

I'm Art Kumbalek and man oh manischewitz what a world, ain'a? So listen, this
happens to be the week of the day when I sit in my chair, wrap myself in
solitude and pray to be warmed by a sentimental mood for reveries of memories
that never die.

And so, for you's mortals who may turn to this page for some kind of savvy
succulent, I present to you the following recording that's been long out of
print but that is now available for a short time only via the remastered version
that goes something like this:

It's very clear to me that, lo, these days do conjure words from a George & Ira
croon tune that begins, "The more I read the papers, the less I comprehend, the
world and all its capers and how it all will end. Nothing seems to be lasting."

Jeez louise, ain't that the truth. Yeah, the song's chorus veers into a boy/girl
with-the-hots lyrical deal, but what the heck, It's still got a damn nice melody
though, not like these songs I got to try to hum today that sound like some
kid's crammed his cat into the Veg-O-Matic and cranked it up to puree, for gosh
sakes.

Cripes, did Congress pass some kind of amendment when I wasn't looking to make
it against the Constitution for musicians these days to put out a song with some
freaking melody to it once in a while? I got the radio on, and I wish I was
deaf.

Which reminds me that commencing soon is the perennial Summerfest. Some of you's
can probably guess what I have to say about that.

The music? No thank you. I'm guessing Mr. Porter, Mr. Arlen, Mr. Kern, Mister
Ellington, Mr. Berlin, Misters Rodgers and Hart will be absent from the grounds;
so, so will I. A guy like me desires to walk away from a music event on some
enchanted evening and be able to carry a tune or two inside his head that he
might feel like humming a couple, three bars of later whilst patronizing a
couple, three bars.

Listen, I've got a theory of American popular music history that I call My
Theory of American Popular Music History that seeks to help explain why a guy
like me has a tough time getting his hum on.

My theory says it started back when they gave the 1971 Academy Award to "Theme
From Shaft" for Song of the Year. That was no song. That was some guy cranked
clean out of his ever-loving gourd with one of those guitar wah-wahs of
equipment. And ever since, anybody with a hankering for a little melody with
their music has been getting the musical shaft.

And not only no melody, but how 'bout those lyrics, ain'a? Let's see if I can
recall: "Shaft. John Shaft." That's the short and long of it, yes? Hold on.
Later, I think there were some more lyrics: "Shaft. John Shaft" and "shut your
mouth." Yeah, that's it. (Not exactly "You are the promised kiss of
springtime/That makes the lonely winter seem long. You are the breathless hush
of evening/That trembles on the brink of a lovely song," what the ****.)

Now I ask you to tell me how the hell some show-biz greaseball out Vegas way
circa '70s was supposed to sing "Theme From Shaft" when he was ready to bring
down the house with his showstopping Oscar-song medley? I tell you, "Theme From
Shaft" wrote "yesterday's news" all over the careers of great crooners like your
Andy Williams, your Dinah Shore, your Jerry Vale, I kid you not.

Yes sir, used to be years ago you'd hear these songbirds on the radio and on the
TV, every day of the week, but now, you got to haul your sorry butt down there
to Branson, Mo., and try to get a seat at the Great American Washed-Up
Entertainment Good Ol' American-Style Our Specialty Theatre to essence a
previous generation's musical greatness, 'cause they sure won't be at
Summerfest. And those Branson shows are sold out for years to come to the mature
kind of crowd who call Tony Bennett "Sonny."

If you want to go but you're not in the will, you're not getting tickets.

Anyways, I've run out of theory so let's call the whole thing off. All I know is
I don't know, but maybe this: They're writing songs of love but not for me;
'cause I'm Art Kumbalek and I told you so.

Johnny Green's  Raintree County -
The Great (Almost) American Novel Becomes The Great American Film Score

by Ross Care

From the book "Performing Arts ­ Motion Pictures", Iris Newsom, Editor.
The Library of Congress, Washington, DC, 1998

++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Author's Introduction:

Many hours of my child-and-young adulthood were spent in the movie theaters of
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. This combined with a burgeoning interest in
composition and music in general and film music in particular led to my early
literary efforts to write seriously about the motion picture music of the late
(and declining) Hollywood studio era, the last days of which I was then
experiencing. Like many young Americans of this period I had also been
fascinated with the animated films of Walt Disney that, after a brief decline in
the 1940s, went into a major renaissance during the formative decade of the
1950s. Indeed with the various technical innovations (and gimmicks) of the '50s
­ 3-D, Cinerama, CinemaScope, and Camera 65 - film music in general also peaked
at this time, moving into what I consider to be its last great classic period.

Part of this Golden Twilight of the Hollywood studio system was MGM's film
version of Ross Lockridge, Jr.'s epic novel, RAINTREE COUNTY. Composer John
Green's musical score for this film was (and is) my favorite film soundtrack LP
of the period. But the fact that I was practically the only writer of the period
to deal seriously with the unique music for the classic animation of the Disney
studio helped me first break in print with articles on the scores and (still
generally little-known) composers for the Disney oeuvre from 1928 through the
'50s and early '60s.

I wrote an extensive piece on Disney composers, "Symphonists for the Sillys,"
for Mike Barrier's legendary animation magazine, Funny World. This came to the
attention of Jon Newsom, then head of the Music Division of the Library of
Congress in Washington, DC, and also a force in the early documentation of
classic film music during this time. Also a pioneering serious admirer of Disney
and animation music in general, Jon invited me down to the Library ­ at that
time I was living in Lancaster, PA. and indicated that if there was anything of
interest (!!!!) among the Music Division's vast holdings that I'd care to write
about the Library would be interested in publishing it. I was of course
fascinated with the Library's major collection of original Hollywood scores that
had been sent there for copyright purposes during the last several decades.

Jon's wife, Iris Newsom, of the Library's Publishing Division, was launching a
new series of deluxe hardback books at this time, what were originally called
the Performing Arts Annuals, each to deal with the holdings of the Library's
various divisions, Music, Motion Pictures, and so on. My first article in
Performing Arts Annual 1986, was autobiographical, "Memoirs of a Movie
Childhood," and deals with growing up with movies in the theaters of Harrisburg,
and the American movie going experience of the period in general. It was
illustrated with film stills and graphics from the Library's Motion Picture
division, these augmented with historic theater photos from the Pennsylvania
State Archives (including a photo of Loew's Regent Theater in downtown
Harrisburg where, during my high school years, I first saw RAINTREE COUNTY in
1957). After this I contributed a variety of articles to the PA series,
including major articles on Cole Porter and Alex North, these peaking in 1998
with two articles for Performing Arts ­ Motion Pictures in 1998.

For this volume I contributed two articles: "Twilight's Last Gleaming," an
overview of Hollywood music from 1950 to 1965, and the essay on RAINTREE COUNTY
that follows. The RAINTREE article deals with both the original novel and its
film version from my personal relationship with both during the late '50s, but
it also focuses on John Green's great score, which is by now considered one of
the strongest elements of the film and one of the great Hollywood scores of all
time.

It should also be noted that this essay only deals in depth with the first third
of this very major score. But in late 2006, and now living in California, I was
approached by Film Score Monthly in Los Angeles to write the liner notes for
their forthcoming two-CD restoration of the complete Green/MGM score. This was
released to much popular acclaim in early 2007, at the time three RAINTREE
threads on FSM's website message boards collectively garnering thousands of
hits. For this CD release, which followed the original (and incomplete) RCA
Victor albums which were in turn re-issued in several formats, I was able to
discuss the entire score, plus half a disc of rare bonus material. I should also
emphasize that I wrote the FSM notes "from scratch," i.e., they are not a
re-write of the following essay and anyone with an interest in the complete
RAINTREE COUNTY score is strongly urged to seek out the Film Score
Monthly/Turner Classic Movie Music CD restoration. (FSM two-disc set, Vol. 9,
No. 19).

After graduating from college I was still listening to RAINTREE COUNTY and was
inspired to write a letter to composer John Green. The following essay also
includes excerpts from Green's response, here included in the article for the
first time, along with the personally autographed photograph he enclosed. These
were sent from London where he was working as musical director for the film
version of OLIVER! That his score and composing for films in general was, at
this time (1968) still essentially unrecognized, indeed ignored, is indicated by
Green's comment: "Your references to the aesthetic reward or lack of same in
connection with the writing of film music triggers so large a topic as to rule
out discussion in a letter of this kind."

I can only hope that somehow John Green and the other once-obscure composers of
this era are now somehow aware of the recognition and love their then-unsung
work has so avidly - even obsessively - inspired and achieved over the past few
decades. And I'm so grateful I was able to express my admiration and respect for
Green's own work to him when I did.

Ross Care, Ventura, California, June, 2007
=============
Raintree County: The Period, The Novel

In the 1950s, when Hollywood optioned seemingly everyone on the American
literary scene for a movie "adaptation", from Herman Melville, William Faulkner,
and Jack Kerouac to Erskine Caldwell, John O'Hara, and Grace Metalious, it was
often the era's unsung film composers who in fact most vividly captured the
American essence of these writers' works in the often questionable film versions
derived from them. Indeed certain composers, such as Alex North and Elmer
Bernstein, became singularly noted for their ability to lend emotional life to
such grandiose attempts at bringing the printed page "to life" onscreen.

North, of course, began an auspicious career with his haunting music for
Tennessee Williams' Broadway play, "A Streetcar Named Desire," going on to evoke
such varied but quintessentially American authors as Faulkner: (The Long Hot
Summer, The Sound and the Fury), Edward Albee (Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?),
and James Leo Herlihy (All Fall Down). Bernstein's career moved into high gear
with his celebrated ` score for the film of Nelson Algren's contemporary novel
about drug addiction, The Man With The Golden Arm, and continued to
sympathetically enhance such diverse adaptations as Algren's Walk On The Wild
Side, Erskine Caldwell's God's Little Acre, James Michener's Hawaii, and the
best Tennessee Williams film after Streetcar, Summer and Smoke. Very
appropriately, Martin Scorsese chose Bernstein to score his recent film of Edith
Wharton's The Age of Innocence.

Whatever its other positive and/or dubious side-effects, going to the movies in
the 1950s provided a crash course introduction to both American and world
literature (including Shakespeare for whose Julius Caesar MGM supplied Marlon
Brando, Deborah Kerr, and a Miklos Rozsa score!) Inexpensive paperback "movie
tie-ins" in Signet, Perma Book, and Bantam editions completed one's education:
along with many other works, you could purchase a play by Tennessee Williams,
complete with original cast and credits and a four-page spread of movie stills,
for thirty-five cents at your friendly local drugstore or news shop. (When John
O'Hara's mammoth "From The Terrace" appeared at a whopping ninety-five cents a
copy it was considered an economic, as well as a literary scandal.)

In February 1957 a fifty-cent Dell paperback with a distinctive watercolor cover
of Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor in an intense and obviously troubled
embrace hit the stands: "Raintree County" by Ross Lockridge, Jr. Above the title
was the simple claim "A great American novel", a remarkably restrained avowal
given the usually excessive and often lurid hype with which most paperbacks (and
films) of the day were promoted. While a relatively modest addendum printed at
the bottom of the cover informed the reader that "Raintree County" was "now a
great Metro-Goldwyn Mayer production", aficionados of film and literature (often
one and the same in those culturally rich times) already well knew it was an MGM
movie, thanks to breathless movie magazine accounts of Montgomery Clift's
well-publicized re-casting opposite Elizabeth Taylor (they had played together
in the depressing but popular A Place in the Sun in 1951) and with whom, wags
insisted, he shared an intense (if then puzzlingly platonic) relationship.
"Raintree's" pre-release notoriety was further enflamed by the handsome Clift's
disfiguring car crash in the middle of the expensive production. Just how
"great" the film was, however, remained to be seen.

In small print under the title's distinctive type font (only slightly varied
from the original hardback edition) was a single word: "abridged". Whoa! The
paperback edition clocked in at 512 pages; for the prospective reader the
inevitable question was, how long might the unexpurgated version be? After at
last seeing the film (a very mixed but still strangely compelling bag) further
investigation led me to my local library and the book's original full-length
1948 version, clocking in at 1060 pages and now disappointingly sheathed in the
neutral (and very uncinematic) binding of most library editions of the day, at
least for those books which managed to survive beyond their initial best (or
non-) selling print-runs. It was nearly a decade since "Raintree" had been
published, when I first found the complete edition still available in the
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania public library. (The generic library binding might also
have been a result of the novel's distinctive original dust-jacket painting: an
anonymous hand seen grasping what appears to be either a canvas or map of an
Arcadian landscape, the contours of which form the graphic outlines of a female
nude, a recurring image in Lockridge's poetic and often highly erotic prose. An
alternative "Book-of-the-Month Club" edition featured a somewhat less
controversial dust-jacket illustration: Adam and Eve clad in prim 19th-century
garb, and receiving a golden apple from an obliging serpent).

I first experienced Raintree County, the movie, the book, and its amazing
musical score, at a formative period in my life, my first years of high school
which also spanned both the last days of one of my favorite theaters, Loew's
Regent in downtown Harrisburg, its ultimate demise a precursor to the 1950s
trust-busting binge which spelled "The End" for MGM's chain of theaters, and the
last gasp of the Hollywood studio system in general, of which "Raintree" was a
key manifestation. I was also flexing my wings as a composer and, thanks mostly
to MGM and Disney, and to having loved movies since the dawn of consciousness,
soon became instinctively and avidly aware of the era's vivid film music.

Raintree was one of the first films to really catalyze this life-long
fascination with music and image. As a budding orchestrator, I was particularly
struck by "Raintree's" basically conventional yet inventive orchestration: for
example, its simple but distinctive use of a tambourine in the "Footrace" and
"July Picnic" sequences, and even more notably, the wordless female chorus and
mysterious shimmer of bell-like sounds woven into the orchestra, which (belying
the mundanely literal visualization in the film itself) actually turned
"Johnny's Search For The Raintree" (as the soundtrack album identified the cue)
into the mystical experience adumbrated on the back of the paperback edition:
"The legend of the Raintree is the age-old tale of man's quest for the
unattainable. In every time and every language poets have sung of it - the Tree
of Life in the Garden of Eden... Apollo's tree bearing golden apples in the
Garden of the Hesperides....mysteriously transplanted to the heart of frontier
America." Pretty heady stuff for a 16-year old, but Johnny Green's ecstatic,
pantheistic score, a sensual and highly empathetic evocation of Ross Lockridge,
Jr.'s unique, multi-faceted novel, made it all palpably real and possible, and
in a manner much more haunting and visceral than the film itself.

In an era when stars like Clift and Taylor were the profusely publicized gods
and goddesses of creation by a relatively restrained (by today's standards)
media, I had no idea who either composer Johnny Green, or author Ross Lockridge,
Jr., were (though I was struck by the fact that I had finally found a namesake
somewhere in the arts.) What I did know was that something about "Raintree"
struck a chord deep within me, in no small measure because of its evocative
musical score, making the film itself an unforgettable experience which I longed
to recapture. So, on my first visit to the legendary Sam Goody record store in
New York, I found myself agonizing over whether I should buy the two-record RCA
Victor album of the "Raintree" score, an unprecedented and expensive (for a
high-school student) item at the time, or settle for the single-disc
"highlights" album so as to also afford the first relatively complete soundtrack
of "Snow White" which had also just been released as part of the new Disneyland
Records series of WDL-4000 original soundtracks. Such were the naive consumer
quandaries of the popular culture addict of the late 1950s!

I never regretted settling for the "Raintree" highlights album, and "Snow
White," but when I finally acquired the double "Raintree" album some years later
(at a much more expensive price as a highly sought-after out-of-print
collector's item), I was thrilled anew by a score which in the meantime had
become one of my (and many people's) most durable favorites, a thrill
experienced again on listening to recent CD re-issues. (In 1972 the July issue
of "High Fidelity" was devoted to film music and listed the then-current
going-price for the two-record "Raintree" set at $150.00, while also
imortalizing the tantelizing anecdote about the legendary "Raintree" cut-out
double albums which had allegedly very briefly surfaced at Goody's bargain
outlet in NYC!)

I've never really stopped listening to Green's score, and when I guested on my
local PBS station's "Desert Island Discs" radio program a few years ago, I had
no qualms about including a track from "Raintree" - the beautiful and
self-contained "July Picnic" cue which had so stuck me on my original viewing of
the film - as a sample of one of the eight discs with which I would select to be
shipwrecked. And of course Green's score, and the film which occasioned it, led
me to the original novel which the music so vividly evoked, and to the curious,
quintessentially American and conflicted life of the novel's author, Ross
Lockridge, Jr.

"Raintree County," the novel, has maintained its reputation and place in
American letters strongly enough to have inspired two biographies of its author,
"Ross and Tom" by John Leggett, and Larry Lockridge's "Shade of the Raintree:
The Life and Death of Ross Lockridge, Jr." (though both the dust-jacket and
title page of the latter book make sure to identify Lockridge as the "Author of
'Raintree County'", in deference to contemporary readers presumed unawareness).
Larry Lockridge's fascinating book addresses everything that anyone who has ever
gotten though his father's intimidating yet fascinating tome might wish to know,
providing many of the details of family history and background which Ross wove
into the book, as well as the saga of its publication and exploitation.

But the blurb on the back of the original dust-jacket sums up the "Raintree"
saga in a nutshell: "In April of 1946, Ross Lockridge, Jr., carried 'Raintree
County' to the office of the Houghton Mifflin company in a suitcase. The
manuscript, weighing twenty pounds, was piled on a table in an antechamber,
where the author and editor sat peering at each other over and around this
Matterhorn of literature. In a few weeks the manuscript was accepted and a
contract signed. Still to come were the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Novel Award and
other successes for the Indiana writer's first novel. The contract, however, was
the first tangible reward of a determination made by Lockridge at the age of
seven to become a writer." The PR for the original edition, superficially a
classic American literary success story, could not foresee the unhappy
conclusion of the "Raintree" saga, nor could anyone reading this terse literary
success story have envisioned the tragic real-life denouement of the author: in
March of 1948, before any production work on the film had begun, Lockridge shut
himself in his family garage in Bloomington and committed suicide.

The somewhat rocky cinematic history of "Raintree County" was fairly assured by
its having won the lucrative MGM Novel Award. Larry Lockridge describes the
competition as follows: "First held in 1944 in a highly publicized campaign to
corral valuable literary properties, the contest would be increasing the award
in 1947 to $150,00 for the author, $25,000 for the publisher, with several
escalator clauses that would bring the total to $275,000 for the author. The sum
$150,000, the equivalent of $1,050,000 in 1993 currency - with escalators, close
to $2 million - was the world's largest literary prize.

"My father was unimpressed. The rules guaranteed no role to the author in
scripting or production, and he was an author who wished to control his novel's
fate to its extremities. He noticed that previously winning novels were 'flashy,
vulgarly constructed novels with an obvious eye on the movies,' and no
distinguished films had yet resulted. He wished to script any film adaptation
himself." 1 The eventual MGM ad campaigns for the film touted the film as being
based on "the prize-winning panoramic novel" while neglecting to mention they
had bestowed the prize themselves! (The grandiose double-page movie magazine ads
also hyped the film, shot in the new big-screen process, "MGM Camera 65," as
being "In the great tradition of Civil War Romance," a tacit reference to "Gone
With The Wind," which "Raintree" recalled only in its period setting. The
author's name appeared in the last line of the copy, in type considerably
smaller than the "Print by Techicolor" credit).

Like its predecessor and most covert influence, James Joyce's "Ulysses,"
"Raintree County" is the story of one day, "A Great Day for Raintree County,
July 4, 1892," and like "Ulysses" that day is described through a complex
filigree of flashbacks and stream-of-consciousness monologues and narratives. No
less than three chronologies - one for the events of the day itself, one listing
the chronological order of the incidents described in the flashbacks, and one
for the actual historical events that bear on the plot - are included to "assist
the reader in understanding the structure of the novel." 2 Perhaps only Alain
Resnais or some such auteur of the European New Wave (or now a television
mini-series), could possibly do justice to the original Lockridge novel, a book
"written by a modern for moderns," as the dust jacket also announced. In 1950s
Hollywood, with its emphasis on linear narrative and near hysterical romantic
emotionalism, "Raintree County" was (next to the then utterly unfilmable
"Ulysses") a screenwriter's worst nightmare come true.

================

Composing The Music of RAINTREE COUNTY

Composer Johnny Green (who, after a short period at the studio in the early
1940s, took over the position of general music director for MGM in 1949, and who
originally studied economics at Harvard before gravitating to a career in music)
was, besides being a consummate conductor, music director, and
composer/song-writer, an articulate scholar and gentleman of the "old school"
whose expertise far exceeded the realm of music. His observations on the
problems involved in transcribing the original novel to the screen are astute:
"The novel from which the screenplay was taken was by no means a straight line
story. Though effective and moving, it was diffuse and involved. Its emotional
complexities, its criss-crossing tensions and surges, its heterogeneous
flashbacks demanded of the reader the greatest possible concentration. One found
oneself time and again turning back to refresh memory and re-establish contact.
These problems had to be faced by Millard Kaufman in constructing his screen
play and by Edward Dmytryk in interpreting the development of the story and the
characters on the screen." Green discreetly but frankly concluded: "Despite
their great skill, vestiges of the diffuseness and involvement of the original
came through on the screen to some extent and presented serious problems to the
composer." Green goes on to describe some of these musical/dramatic problems and
his potential solutions:

"My first decision had to do with general approach. The time: mid
nineteenth-century. The place: a fictional and prosperous county in Indiana just
preceding, during, and immediately following the Civil War. The atmosphere: the
fantasy of the Legend of the Raintree (symbolizing Man's endless quest for the
unattainable) superimposed, in not too clear-cut a fashion, on a most realistic
and practical set of situations.

"What should be the style, what should be the context of the music? Would there
be the inevitable juxtaposition of 'The Battle Hymn of the Republic' against
'Dixie'? Should the score be based on indigenous music of the period? Should the
music have a 'modern sound' and, if so, to what extent? Should block color or
melody be the predominant characteristic? I even considered the possibility of a
totally source music score, meaning that all the music would come from a source
within the action, either seen on the screen or implied.
"Almost immediately I ruled out source music in favor of a completely theatrical
approach. Next, I vowed that there would be no 'Battle Hymn/Dixie' goings-on and
that the thematic material would be original (to the degree that this is
possible with me). I then determined that the score should be romantic in
feeling, that it would be melodic and that it should have what we know as 'that
modern western sound,' not 'Wagon Wheels' of course, but rather the pentatonic
and, to some degree, polytriadic sound that, under the able aegis of certain
composers too well-known to require mention, has become the trade mark of the
open spaces in recent serious American music."

Probably the most striking aspect of the score as I've come to know and study it
over the years, is its timeless simplicity and elusive style, the result of a
dynamic fusion of most of the techniques described above. Green's music does not
have the immediately recognizable style of North or Elmer Bernstein in their
peak period, yet neither does it sound like anyone's else. And, despite of what
Green himself notes about the influence of serious American composers, he
nonetheless manages to evoke a vivid, haunting sense of Americana without
resorting to the Copland-isms he himself suggests in the above quote.

As a composer Green also has the strong, concentrated melodic and harmonic sense
of a great songwriter, as witness his harmonically audacious "Body and Soul"
with its unprecedented modulations, and the more straightforward but equally
haunting "Easy Come, Easy Go," which Green later integrated into the score of
"They Shoot Horses, Don't They?" (1969), unfortunately his only other major
score to equal "Raintree's" significance (though his contribution therein is
primarily as musical supervisor/arranger for period standards which supplied a
bitterly ironic counterpoint to this frankly depressing account of 1930s dance
marathons).

The "Raintree" score takes its essential character from "The Song of Raintree
County," and is thus basically lyrical, or "melodic" as Green also notes above
(while also integrating aspects of the "block color" approach he also cited).
The song is also a rare instance of a title tune satisfying both the artistic
and commercial demands of the medium and industry. Green spoke frankly (and with
the voice of one who, as head of the expensive MGM music department, took such
considerations in his stride) about the decision to include an exploitable title
song in the context of a serious historical drama: ".... a practical and
perplexing problem... Should there be a song? The current vogue in so-called
title songs has become a bugaboo to all of us who work in films. That it has
been overworked to a fare-thee-well there is no doubt. That a smash title song
ranks high among the top exploitation and promotion media that a movie can have
is also an established fact. That 'Raintree County' represented a cost of over
five and a half million dollars was already common knowledge when I approached
my job. Could I, in good composer's conscious, accede to the pressure for a
title song? I decided that I could. Hence, 'The Song of Raintree County' with
lyrics by Paul Francis Webster."

Green also decided to apply to the score as a whole a technique somewhat
eschewed in modern film scoring, the use of leit motifs. The epic nature of the
story itself, combined with its melodramatic, near-operatic characterizations
and incidents - a mad heroine straight out of a Southern Gothic "Lucia"! - made
such a choice both practical and appropriate. "What to do about the diffuseness,
the multiple lines, the crisscrossing emotional conflicts? Decision:
straightforward leit motif. A theme for every important character (or
combination of characters), locales, emotional element. Result: thirteen
thematic entities with specific story identifiability (there are additional
transitional and independent motifs, of course). Thus I hoped to provide certain
clarifying 'islands' or 'audio-reminders' that would help the audience, if only
subconsciously, to orient individual events and character relationships to the
whole." 6 One might also bear in mind that "Raintree" was a product of the
pre-video age when audiences were expected and indeed required to digest a film
in one viewing (or at most only a few) during its relatively brief release
(though, like a few classic, i.e., especially expensive MGM offerings,
"Raintree" was briefly re-issued).

Both film and score fall into three major sections, following the linear
plotline, which focuses primarily on the hero, John Shawnessy (Montgomery Clift)
and his two conflicting loves, that screen-writer Kaufman extricated from
Lockridge's complex and cross-dissolving paean to 19th-century America. In the
process (and probably of necessity!) about two-thirds of the characters and
incidents in the book were discarded. The film's opening sequences describe the
hero's late youth and coming of age in a mystical pastoral Indiana, and his
naive relationship with his college sweetheart, Nell Gaither (Eva Marie Saint).
In the middle section the plot thickens as he is tricked into marriage with a
beautiful but disturbed Southern belle, Susanna Drake, (Elizabeth Taylor) and
this section also tracks their atmospheric, indeed Gothic, interlude in New
Orleans and the pre-Civil War South of the girl's troubled childhood. The third
and final section brings on the war, and the birth of John and Susanna's son,
leading to Susanna's demented flight south during the war, her temporary
restoration but eventual death prior to the happy and decidedly non-Lockridge
Hollywood ending as Johnny walks off into the sunset with his own true love,
Nell, under an imposing (if botanically incorrect) Raintree! Important secondary
characters maintained from the book include Johnny's mentor and companion, the
arch and Byronic "Perfessor" Jerusalem Styles (Nigel Patrick); the brash but
good-hearted rural rake, Flash Perkins (Lee Marvin ), initially Johnny's
opponent in the July 4th foot race but later his Civil War buddy; and Johnny's
rival, the smarmy politician Garwood B. Jones (Rod Taylor).

Impossibly managing to both tie together and ultimately galvanize a problematic
screenplay, Green's lyricism (embodied in his evocative sense of orchestral
color and skillful, dramatically astute contrapuntal development) magically
evokes the essence of Lockridge's complex, overtly sensual and pantheistic novel
to a far more sublime extent than anything else in the pedestrian (if
maddeningly charismatic) film version. The visual iconography of Clift, Taylor,
and Saint, and the near-Hardyesque ambiance of the location shooting (Nell
sweeping through a lushly Arcadian landscape as Green's motif for she and Johnny
sweepingly sounds the Olympian promise that their college graduation and
Lockridge's book both celebrate and lament; the eerie visit to Susanna's
burned-out plantation, with its brilliant musical equation of psychosis and
racial hysteria) sublimely capture the despairing glory to which Lockridge's
valiant book is a testament. And of course Green's score is absolutely it, the
most magical mystical element in a movie that unfortunately eventually runs out
of both steam and conviction over the course of two-hour-plus running time. But
despite these few (and not inconsequential) positive elements, MGM/Hollywood
star quality at its best, and Green's superb score, the film is frankly a
travesty of the author's Joycean stream-of-consciousness narrative, as how could
it not be in an era when screenwriting rigidly adhered to a strictly linear mode
of plotting.

Raintree County was among the last "big" pictures produced in Hollywood with the
considerable and heretofore durable resources of the studio system, resources
which were already beginning to crumble during the 1950s. An 1954 article on the
MGM music department (where money once flowed like water) commented: "Whether
Johnny Green's financial training influenced Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer to name him
administrative head of their music department, with its $2,000,000 annual
budget, I do not know, but the fact remains that a dollars-and-cents outlook
carefully governs his actions as head of this complex activity. With a contract
composing staff which includes Miklos Rozsa, Bronislau Kaper, Andre Previn,
Adolph Deutsch, George Stoll, Jeff Alexander, Charles Wolcott, and Green
himself, MGM seldom goes outside its own walls for free-lance compositional
talent. The current policy of restriction to staff composers is influenced by
the considerations of economy, a major factor in all Hollywood operations today
in view of the uncertainties created by TV competition and the unsettled
problems of 3-D and stereophonic sound, etc." 7

As general music director it was Green's responsibility not only to assign the
various composers their films, but also to oversee the placement of music
therein. In the mid-1950s MGM still maintained more than one hundred persons in
the music department as a whole, including (besides composers) arrangers,
conductors, copyists, librarians, orchestra players, music coaches, and
administrative personnel. Green also cited the "decidedly controlled editorial
supervision" of the studio's music, noting that a kind of musical "script" was
prepared for all of the studio's dramatic pictures. Running as long as ten to
twelve single-spaced typewritten pages, these scripts completely outlined the
use of music in each picture: its general character, whether it dominates or is
"under" the action, etc. (The music "script" might be compared to a "story
treatment" which sets out similar parameters for a film's dramatic
requirements). During the period of Green's administrative duties at MGM, it was
he and his associates, including the producer and director, who fashioned these
musical outlines, usually watching the unscored picture countless times,
re-running sequences that were under particular musical consideration. Ideas and
comments were taken down verbatim and roughed into the music script which was
then presented to the composer who, along with Green and his staff, prepared a
cue-sheet with exact timings for the musical episodes. Once finalized, this
cue-sheet, with its split-second timings, was the final guide for composer and
conductor.

Green's final score for "Raintree County" is notated in five bound volumes, the
first of which represents a version of the musical script described above.
Besides detailed timing charts for each musical cue, often with references to
the actual spoken dialogue in each sequence, volume I also includes Green's
personal notes and comments to the various arrangers (most taken from his actual
pencil score) who assisted on the film, and detailed cue-by-cue lists of the
instrumental and vocal ensembles required for recording, as well as instructions
as to when and how these orchestral/vocal tracks were to be linked and
superimposed on one another, special effects (such as "reverb"), and lyrics for
both the Main Title and "Never Till Now," the song developed from the euphoric
Johnny/Susanna love theme.

Concerning his use of a staff of arrangers Green wrote: "An orchestrator by
profession, I compose my motion picture dramatic music in detailed, seven line
orchestral sketches. Why not, then, go the rest of the way and work in full
score? Because, even before the panic sets in, there just isn't enough time
under the scheduling system that prevails. The small time spread between even
the most detailed sketches and the full score provides the differential between
'making the date' and not making it. There is no orchestration credit on
'Raintree County' because the overwhelmingly major portion of the score was
committed to paper in my own fully detailed, seven line sketches. When, however,
towards the end of the composition period, my remaining time was suddenly cut in
less than half, a group of talented, good friends rallied round to make the
impossible recording date possible. After meticulous projection room discussion
and sessions at the piano with me, Alexander Courage, Sidney Cutner, Robert
Franklyn, Conrad Salinger, and Albert Sendrey each adapted and arranged my
detailed sketches for certain remaining scenes." 9 Volume I of Green's final
bound set also includes some credits as to which arrangers worked on which
sequences, these becoming more detailed towards the end of both picture and
score. The supplementary arrangers were generally assigned specific sections of
the film: Sid Cutner handling the Civil War sequences in at the beginning of
Part II of the film, Conrad Salinger contributing the end cues, and so on;
Albert Sendrey, and some others seem to have worked on a variety of cues
throughout.


The Score(s)

Film Score Monthly's January 2007 CD Release (heard this afternoon on the Music
of the Stars)

Green's final five-volume score for "Raintree County" is dated September 13,
1957, and is dedicated to his daughter, Bonnie. Volume I is divided into five
sections, with sections II through V listing the actual cues as they finally
appear in score form in volumes II through V. The score volumes are also
arranged by reels: volume II/reels 1-6, etc. Cues are listed as they are heard
in the film, and also numbered G1, G2, etc., G referring to the sequence of the
pieces in Green's bound volumes. Exact timing data and instrumentation for each
cue are also included, and some (but not all) are dated. These bound volumes are
no doubt the "detailed, seven line orchestral sketches" of which Green spoke in
his liner notes, and are indeed thoroughly notated, down to such minute
technical details as Green's notations for pedal changes in the harp part.

While Green's original volumes are now at Harvard, the Library of Congress in
Washington also has photocopies of the original studio piano conductor's score
of the "Music Score of Phonograph album 'Raintree County'. Received on Dec. 11,
1957, this is the copy sent to the Library by MGM for copyrighting purposes. The
phonograph album score, dated 6-25-57 by Loew's Incorporated, is in the
beautifully executed style of all the MGM scores of the period, a key example of
the meticulous work of the studio era's music copying departments, while Green's
volumes are done mostly in free-hand pencil, clear and also quite meticulous,
but not always easy for the non-professional eye to decipher. An album of piano
themes, "The Music of RAINTREE COUNTY" (Robbins Music Corp., New York, NY, 1957,
$1.25), was also published at the time of the film's release, and a copy (dated
Nov. 19, 1957) may also be found in the Music Division.

In the following score discussion reference will be made to both the Green and
Phonograph Album scores, as well as to the written data and notes contained in
Green's volume I. Space considerations limit my in-depth investigation of the
score to cues from the opening Indiana sequences (admittedly, for me, the most
lyrical and atmospheric sections of both film and score).

Section one of Green's Volume I lists the film's major credits, and notes that
its world premiere was in Louisville, Kentucky on October 2, 1957. The
composition period of the score is cited as November 1956-May 1957. The notes in
section one pertain mainly to the film's road-show engagement "Overture," but
also include Paul Francis Webster's first draft of his lyrics for "The Song of
Raintree County," dated April 10, 1957:

         The way to Raintree County
         Can't be found on a map or a chart.
         Like me you'll find that Raintree's a state of the mind
         or a dream
         in your heart.

         Long ago one day
         with the buds of early May
         up you came like a flame from the South!
         And I looked into (laughing eyes so bright and blue)
         Eyes of periwinkle blue
         and I knew;
         then I knew - -

         I'd love you in Raintree County
         and I'd learn what we all seek to know
         We shared a golden dream when we found our true love
         In Raintree long ago.

         For the brave who dare
         there's a Raintree everywhere,
         We who dreamed found it so long ago.

Webster's words are basically the same as those used in the final version of the
song; the main concepts are all there and in need only of a few instances of
fine-tuning. Green commented that his challenge "...was to write a melody, with
a certain folk flavor, which would serve well as the thematic representation of
Raintree County itself, of a locale and its people, have popular appeal as a
song and yet dovetail with the color and style of the total score," while
Webster's was "...to use the words 'Raintree County' with the title, to create a
lyric that would be comprehensible in today's incomprehensible song market, to
maintain some definite relationship between the words of the song and at least
the feeling , if not the story of the picture, to be commercial and yet be
literate enough to 'belong' in the company of the rest of the elements of the
film." 10

Webster, who created effective lyrics for a variety of title songs from the
period, managed to tastefully meet the considerable demands cited by Green. The
main revision in the original lyrics quoted above occurs in the first two lines,
the lyricist opting to insert a terse reference to the legend of the Raintree
which suffuses both book and film: "They say in Raintree County There's a tree
bright with blossoms of gold," then just slightly varying the next two lines:
"but you will find the Raintree's a state of the mind, or a dream to enfold."
The song as a whole is compact, and the expected second A section (of the
usually strict AABA form of most pop songs of the period) never happens;
instead, Green and Webster move directly to the B (or bridge) section with its
reference to the Elizabeth Taylor character, the "flame from the south." The
final A section manages to merge both the obligatory reference to "love,"
requisite in any song of the period ("I'd love you in Raintree County....") and
finally the informing concept that Green refers to as "the essence of the
picture" and which serves as a kind of coda, "..... For the brave who dare
there's a Raintree everywhere, we who dreamed found it so, long ago," a phrase
which even manages to suggest the original (and unpunctuated) closing lines of
Lockridge's book: "....of some young hero and endlessly courageous dreamer."

Nat King Cole (a rather curious choice for a film the heroine of which is driven
mad by, among other things, her paranoia over having "nigra blood") performs the
song as the film's Main Title. Due to contractual restrictions Cole's version is
not included on the RCA soundtracks, but he did record "The Song of Raintree
County" as a Capitol single and on an LP album of movie songs; while the single
did not prove a major hit, the song itself was included on many of the
then-popular movie theme "mood" albums of the day. Both scores include Cole's
vocal line and orchestral accompaniment, though only Green's includes the two
additional brief cues, "The Lion" (for the MGM logo), and a transition into the
song referred to as "Nat King Cole Capitol Intro" which leads directly into the
"Main Title Nat "King" Cole version". A cue for the 12-voice male choral back-up
to the Cole solo is included in the Green score, but no copy of the mixed choral
version arrangement used on the record album is to be found in either score. A
complete version of the title song, and "Never Til Now," the song developed from
the Johnny/Susanna love theme (but not sung in the film), are both included in
the piano album as well.

The melody of "The Song of Raintree County," a folk-like diatonic theme in which
the repeated perfect 5th intervals of the opening phrases build to a poignant
suspension effect on the word "find", permeates the first third of the score,
weaving into and out of the cues and various other motifs in a manner richly
suggestive of the original novel's stream of consciousness style. No matter how
much new material is introduced in the score's opening cues, each element seems
to marvelously gravitate to a duly transformed reprise of the title theme,
thereby reinforcing the hyper-lyrical "Raintree" motive (and its charged
symbolic mythos) in the minds and hearts of the audience.


Reel 1, Part 1: "Overture" - "Nell and Johnny's Graduation Gifts"

Both scores open with the road show "Overture", "adapted and arranged in part by
Albert Sendrey from themes by Johnny Green, ASCAP." The most complete version is
found in the record album score, while Green's copy omits the Susanna/Johnny
love theme which forms the middle section of the album "Overture. Green's
personal notes also list several unused thematic sequences considered for the
"Overture," including the "Swamp Agitato," "The Carriage Ride," a "War
Commentary" theme, and an "Emotional Tension" subject. At one point Green also
notes: "Call Sendry May 4th with 'Never' development".

The first actual cue in the film (after the Main Title song slowly fades out
over a series of establishing landscape scenes) is "Nell and Johnny's Graduation
Gifts," built mostly on transformations of the optimistic motif that springs
from a simple major chord in the second inversion, but given a modernistic cast
with its prominent use of major 4th intervals.

The instrumentation is marked: 2 fl.; 1 ob-E.H. (English horn); 2 cls. (A &
B-flat); 1 bass cl. (3rd cl if wanted); 1 bn; 3 hrns' 1 harmonica' 1 perc-
triangle; bells; 1 hp' 1 cel; 14; 4; 4; 2 (these latter numbers referring to the
string section): total instruments: 38. This cue appears on the album almost
exactly as it is heard in the film, underscoring the sequence in which Johnny
and his Raintree County sweetheart, Nell, exchange graduation gifts in a sunny
woods. Like most of Green's cues in his personal volumes, this one is notated in
the seven stave format he described above; his notes to his orchestrator (here
unspecified), are included. For a shot of Nell crossing the stream, Green
suggests: "This is now a rich flowing pastoral - string-lead tutti - warm with
shimmering wws (woodwinds), fluid harp, etc, the soft bells, celeste, etc." When
Nell presents Johnny with his gift of a book on Raintree County Green notes:
"This is a straightforward statement of the Raintree song. The melodic burden to
be entirely with the strings - Completely simple - dialogue style." (A harmonica
solo nonetheless captures and elaborates the already poignant melody.) As Johnny
and Nell exchange an emotionally charged glance, Green explicates: "This is a
big string lead tutti - the big open country - much warmth - pastoral style,
wws. perhaps - but don't cover the tune!". That so subtle an exchange as that of
mere glances should elicit from Green so pointed and precise a musical response,
points to that incredible symbiosis between music and emotion that Hollywood in
this period (and Green uniquely in this instance) inherited from the legacy of
European romanticism. No date is attached to this "Johnny/Nell" cue.

Reel 2, Part 2": "There's Another Tree"

The next cue is a brief but evocative track, "There's Another Tree," (not heard
on the soundtrack album). It underscores the Professor's description of the
mystical Golden Raintree which, local legend holds, Johnny Appleseed brought to
the heart of frontier Indiana (interestingly, the idea presented here is
essentially that expressed on the back of the paperback edition: a lovely
Americana myth that gilds the novel's tortured psychologies with a homegrown
transcendent grandeur). Scored for 2 flutes (1 doubling alto flute), 1 oboe, 2
clarinets, 1 bsn., horns (Green's asks "2 or 3, Al?' suggesting Albert Sendrey
or Alexander Courage worked on these sections), 3 percussion: bells, xylophone,
vibraphone, and "small cymbal-metal rod" and a note with "finger cymbals"
crossed out and replaced by" "Raintree Jimjik," 1 harp, 1 celeste, strings: 14,
4, 4, 2. (No total here). "Echo Chamber" is also written and double-underlined
on the title page. The cue is an exotic, mystical variation on the title song,
scored for highly reverbed (and atmospheric) alto flute solo and tremolo strings
divided in three and four parts, which vividly underscores the Professor's
narrative (including a "chinoiserie" spin on the bridge) about the oriental
origins of Appleseed's planting. Needless to say, the cue sublimely tracks the
profound feelings that the Raintree and its attendant symbolism arouse in the
questing Johnny. Date: 5/3/57.

Reel 2, Part 2: "Johnny's Search For The Raintree"

The Professor's provocative narrative leads directly to "Johnny's Search For the
Raintree," one of the most ecstatic and pantheistic sections of the score, and
one of the film's most celebrated cues. The orchestra is expanded here, mostly
by a full 4/3/3/1 brass section, along with additional percussion including 4
timpani. Green notes that the "Raintree Jimjik will be separately recorded," as
will be 6 high soprano voices. Strings are also expanded (22/6/6/4), bringing
the orchestra to a total of 64. Titled simply "The Swamp" in Green's score, the
cue is a contrapuntal fusion of all the motifs heard in the score so far,
including hints of the "Nell and Johnny" theme (suggesting that their love may
already be the answer to Johnny's youthful search) and introduces new material
in the form of the mystical motif of the great Swamp itself, a combination of an
ascending bass arpeggio preluding the mystical half-step swamp motive (C-D)
heard almost immediately in the unison female voices.

A fragment of the Raintree song, its opening perfect 5ths, is heard in solo horn
(marked "hauntingly" at measure 6) as the swamp motif extends itself in triplet
figures in 4/4 and 3/4 while the accompaniment remains in 12/8 and 9/8. As the
wordless voices soar to a high obligato (measure 11) the full melody of the song
is heard in the cello section in a high register as the vocal obligato
continues, escalating from unison to thirds, and finally to ecstatic full triads
at the "mystic" parallel chords which always form the transition to the song's
bridge.

At measure 22 the voices revert to unison for a statement of the bridge, but a
series of abrupt and rather jagged cuts on the soundtrack of the film suggest
that there was some last minute tampering with the visual structure of this
sequence. In the film the 4-part horn chord at measure 21 is repeated, an
obvious and rather awkward studio edit, and a large and quite abrupt cut (which
includes the end of the bridge and the reverbed trombone reprise of the song's
main melody with its lovely solo violin and harmonica counter lines) is made to
measure 28, the "Subito molto agitato" section where Johnny falls into a hidden
pool. Cuts continue in the film music track, including some measures dropped out
of the agitato fugato treatment of the song melody underscoring Johnny's
struggle in the water, and some bars are also snipped from the beautiful
transitional coda, with its reprise of the swamp motif heard in solo oboe as the
mystical voices "ahhhh" the "Song of Raintree County" to bring the sequence to
an unexpectedly tranquil close.

Fortunately, the cue as Green composed it is heard in its entirety on the
soundtrack album. That there were some problems with this sequence during the
post-production period is also suggested by the fact that Green's score has an
insert (noted as measures 27a to 27g) with a crossed-out measure at the end.
Though no arranger credit or date is included with Green's sketch, a somewhat
smudged comment at the "agitato" section at measure 28 states: "Al, please add
no preparation, wws. (?), hp. gliss. or the like. The complete shock is the
intent here". At the same point (where Johnny falls into the pool in the film)
Green notes the sopranos' climactic high B-flat as "Quasi scream"!

While up to this point the film is promisingly engaging, due primarily to
idyllic location shooting in the Nell and Johnny scenes, and especially to the
cynically witty dialogue and arch characterization of Nigel Patrick as the
Professor, the swamp sequence, with its picturesque but sadly mundane imagery -
at one point Green notes the "big bird shot" in his score - is something of a
let-down. Nothing in the literal visualization of this sequence measures up to
the poetry with which Ross Lockridge, Jr. evoked the mystical pantheism of his
mythic Raintree County, or indeed to the very Lockridgian music which Green
created for this key sequence. (Which is no doubt why the sequence was
ultimately trimmed).

In the cinematic "Raintree" director Dmytryk seems more successful with actors,
particularly the males, than with mood or atmosphere. The swamp sequence, more
than any other in the film, also suggests that MGM got to "Raintree County"
several years too late: episodes such as this should have called forth the
magical poetic naturalism of such location/studio fusions as "The Yearling" (not
to mention the on-location naturalism that director Clarence Brown and MGM
brought to their unexpectedly authoritative realization of Faulkner's "Intruder
In The Dust"), and of certain studio hot-house films like "The Pirate" or
sections of other musicals such as "Ziegfeld Follies". The Swamp sequence would
surely have benefited from some of the studio poetry of the sequence from "The
Yearling" when Jody finds the fawn in an artfully artificial Florida glade and
carries it home against the backdrop of a luminous MGM cyclorama of Maxfield
Parish cloudscapes. But by the late '50s even MGM had lost its ability to
convincingly stylize the lush, highly atmospheric studio look that found its
apotheosis in the 1940s (as films like "Raintree" and "Green Mansions" sadly
proved). Traces of this ambiance fleetingly appear in "Raintree County," for
example, in the New Orleans episodes, some of which have the soft-focus
mezzotinted look of Minnelli's "Limehouse Blues" sequence in "Ziegfeld Follies".
The swamp cue is also undated.

Reel 3, Parts 1 & 2: "Freehaven"/"Flash Perkins"

After a brief cue, "Nell and Gar", underscoring Johnny's post-swamp encounter
with Nell and Garwood Jones (and cut from the final print), the scene shifts to
the rural Indiana town of Freehaven, and a jaunty, folk-like motif for Flash
Perkins, with its infectious banjo sound, and syncopated, pseudo ragtime rhythm.

Green's score includes two "Freehaven" cues, and it's the second (G11), titled
"Freehaven 2nd Revised," dated 7/30/57, and marked "Andantino alla Campagna,"
that is heard in the film. The major cue in this section is "Meet Flash and
Susanna," dated 5/6/57, and which is introduced by a brief "Prelude" (Reel 3,
Part 2A, 5/13/57); both underscore Johnny's meeting with Flash Perkins (Lee
Marvin), a bragging rake who challenges Johnny to a spontaneous footrace. Green
notes concerning the two opening cues: "This is a direct seque-as-one at bar 2
from end of reel 3, part 2A - 'Prelude to Meet Flash and Susanna'. Will be
recorded as one piece." Sections of this cue are heard as the "Flash Perkins"
record album track, but since the exciting musical build-up to the race is
abruptly cut off in the film when the Professor calls a halt and reschedules it
for the 4th of July, a climactic alternative ending was written for the
soundtrack album, and is included in Green's score. The episode also introduces
Susanna, whom Johnny briefly glimpses as a crowd gathers for the race, the first
brief statement of their main love theme being intercut into the "Flash" music
(but not included on the albums). On the title page of "Meet Flash and Susanna"
Green notes: "Clarinetists in this piece must be 2 of our jazz men" and "Please
get Jack Marshall on banjo (tenor). He will need capo." A brief undated cue,
"Johnny's Crown" (Reel 3, Part 4, and marked "Allegro rimato - sardonically"),
concludes the outdoor Freehaven sequences.

Reel 4, Parts 1 & 2: "Johnny and Susanna's First Meeting"

Reel 4 opens with Johnny's visit to the photographer's studio where he first
meets Susanna Drake. The score here is divided into five cues, including two
inserts in addition to the main cues, with the pivotal cue being "First
Meeting", Reel 4, Part 1. (These various cues are edited into the track "Johnny
and Susanna's First Meeting" on the album.) Only the opening and closing cues in
Green's volume are dated: 5/13/57 and 5/14/57, respectively. The orchestration
is for a reduced orchestra of about 38 with an emphasis on strings and reeds.
The scherzo-like cue "Look at the Birdie" opens reel 4, cut off midway by an
"Insert" which interjects a fully-developed statement of the "positive" love
theme at measure 8 as Johnny sees Susanna being photographed as she poses in a
draped white Greek gown, clutching a lily, and looking drop-dead gorgeous. Liz
gives the first in a series of marvelously unspontaneous shrieks as she notices
Johnny and rushes off to change. The lyrical love theme is interrupted by a
light scherzo variation as Susanna is seen hurriedly changing so she can catch
up with Johnny, and the cue fades as he reluctantly leaves the studio.

Just as Johnny is exiting Susanna rushes out to meet him (Liz shrieking "Wait
for me!" in another "unladylike" outcry which is referred to in the ensuing
dialogue), and the main cue, "First Meeting", commences. This is primarily a
development of the love theme, pure and simple. At one point Green notes: "Al:
this next section is a simple, tender, warm and straightforward statement of the
Susanna-Johnny Happy Love Theme. The melodic and harmonic burden is to be
entirely in the warm strings unless otherwise specifically indicated. Please add
no element, harmonic, rhythmic or linear that does not appear here. Do not
spread any counter element so as to place it above the top of the melody line.
We are behind dialogue all the way!!! Please indicate in this sketch exactly
who's playing what as you score!!!"

As with the "Johnny's Search" cue, there seems to have been some re-editing of
the film sequence. There is an alternate bar at measure 25, succeeded by several
deleted measures and an added cue, "First Meeting (Insert)" The insert brings
the cue to a momentary conclusion in tandem with the Professor's line, "Boy, you
are definitely ready to graduate!", when he sees Susanna on Johnny's arm. There
also appears to be an unspecified cut of an entire page at measure 29, and
around measure 35 Green notes "DO NOT COPY - THIS IS A DELETION - AN ERROR -NOT
A CUT!!!," after which the cue more or less proceeds as notated, moving on to
the statement of the "Happy Love Theme" Green described above.

The cue also includes a lovely but vaguely troubled variation on the love theme,
harmonized in open 5ths and 6ths, which lends an appropriate premonition of
melancholy to the cue as a whole. There are actually two variants of "happy"
love theme used throughout the score. The first is a languid, semi-pastoral
version in 6/8 time with slight harmonic variations. The second variant is the
one described above, in 4/4 with the opening motif harmonized in 5ths and 6ths
and slightly extended and developed.

Reel 4 ends with a brief coda, Nell's Huff," in which, seeing Johnny with
Susanna, she displaces her anger and slaps Garwood; his stunned reaction is
Mickey-Moused with comic muted trumpets, in Green's words: "Harmon" (a type of
brass mute) "but not jazzy".

The ensuing sequence involving the 4th of July footrace, and the Professor's
unsuccessful plot to get Flash Perkins drunk and keep Johnny sober by
surreptitiously substituting tea in Johnny's bourbon bottle, opens with a
close-up of the winner's wreath of oak leaves (referred to in the "Johnny's
Crown" cue) held by Susanna. The footrace episode is one of the book's more
celebrated passages, and was reprinted in "Life" magazine at the time of the
novel's publication. The entire sequence is unscored except for a few instances
of source band music in the background (and another great outcry from Liz as a
firecracker is exploded near her hoopskirt in the opening shot). Even the
footrace itself, so vividly evoked in the "Flash Perkins" album cue, goes
unscored.

Reel 5, Parts 4-6; Reel 6, Parts 1-4: "July Picnic"/"Train From The South"

The "July Picnic" sequence (along with its emotionally charged "coda") is
perhaps the peak of Green's by turns heroic, by turns wrenching, lyricism. It
heartbreakingly distills both the idealistic aspirations of the American
"experiment" (which Lockridge's entire book throws into hopeful/despairing
relief), and that mid-summer sense of emotional ripeness and decay which Johnny
and Susanna's romantic peak-and-subsequent-downfall so inexorably illustrates.
Perhaps only Franz Waxman's underscoring for the same holiday in "Peyton Place"
is Green's equal in both celebrating and mourning the day's unique mood of
promise and defeat.

After John wins the footrace, the scene shifts to the streamside Independence
Day picnic of John, Susanna, the Professor, and Lydia Grey (the beautiful but
married object of the Professor's affections). Green makes up for the absence of
music in the preceding footrace sequence by providing uninterrupted scoring for
the entire picnic scene, and its ensuing sequence, Johnny's later encounter with
Nell after Susanna has left Freehaven. Two short additional cues support the
concluding episodes which document the aftermath of the Professor's botched
attempt to escape Raintree County with Lydia Grey. The picnic sequence is
divided into several cues - "Pursuit of Happiness," (no date), "July Swim,"
(5/14/57), "Tell Me About the Raintree" (no date) - all underscoring the
sequence which climaxes with Susanna's seduction of Johnny, while the "Dell
Insert," (7/1/57) and "Your Exact Location" (no date) cue John's brief but
emotional reunion with Nell after Susanna has returned to the South. All of
these cues are heard intact in the 6.01 "July Picnic" track on the album.

"Pursuit" is a brief introductory cue for the picnic scene, and a scherzo-like,
syncopated variation on the happy love theme which develops to a swirling climax
as Johnny and Susanna frolic in the stream and collapse in a secluded spot on
the bank. When Susanna asks about the Raintree, (in one of Taylor's most subdued
and touching moments), Green supplies an equally moving variation on the title
song with contrapuntal lines for harmonica and the wordless female choir heard
in the swamp sequence: "Tell Me About The Raintree". As Johnny and Susanna
passionately embrace, the music peaks over a discreet fadeout, continuing
uninterruptedly as the scene shifts to Johnny and Nell in the fields, with an
ecstatic development of the Johnny/Nell motif in solo trumpet and strings. Green
again noted his desired effect: "Again the big open pastoral quality as in Reel
1, Part 2 - the upper woodwinds moving around the inner harmony. The two harps
and celeste helping the float and shimmer continually." He further adds
humorously: "immer der schimmer, toujours la schmour" and "sempre I spaghetti,"
adding on page 143, "relax the flax." John's conversation with Nell, "Dell
Insert," as he speculates on becoming a great writer, effects a moody antiphonal
development of their motif, fused with the "Raintree" song theme, and the cue
concludes with another full-length variation on the title song as Johnny and
Nell temporarily reconcile: "Your Exact Location". With these several cues
contained in one continuous flow of music, one is struck by Green's impressive
skill at both developing his motifs in a cohesive, dramatically compelling
fashion, and deftly integrating appropriate and highly atmospheric variations on
the resilient title tune into the underscore.

Several brief cues (all undated)--"Going Home" (Reel 6, Part 3), which is also
found in the revised version heard in the film (Reel 6, Part 3A), and "Train
From the South" (Reel 6, Part 4, here arranged by Alexander Courage)--provide
hints of the polytonal brass chords, some built on 4ths, which will characterize
several of the later Deep South/Civil War cues. The brief brass "Train" cue,
also marks the end of the film's first section, and the symbolic end of Johnny's
youth. As the train on which the Professor finally escapes pulls away, he
bestows on Johnny his richly cynical last word, with this departing comment:
"Dear friends, remember me as someone who loves Raintree County, but just
happens to loathe everyone in it," at which point Johnny finds Susanna on the
platform, newly returned from the South with the news that she is pregnant.

The Rest of the Score

While this opening third features some of Green's most charismatic and lyrical
music, his score continues to grow in power as the screenplay moves into its
long-in-coming (and somewhat laborious) resolution, maintaining a consistency
and depth that unfortunately eludes the rest of the film. Space prohibits
further cue-by-cue discussion of this wonderful American musical classic, but
mention should be made of Green's highly original music for the gradual
manifestation of Susanna's dementia, as well as his haunting (and haunted) cues
for the sequence in which John and Susanna visit the burned-out shell of her
childhood mansion where she formed a deep and lasting attachment to her Negro
nurse, Henrietta.

Green uses a motif based on the expressionistic interval of F-sharp to
F-natural, sometime B-natural to B-flat, and first heard on an anachronistic but
oddly appropriate alto sax (with added reverb effect) to represent Susanna's
madness. There is also a more agitated secondary "mad" motif of 16th note
triplets which whirl over a counter melody based on a whole-tone scale. (See
"Triplet Mad Motif").

The ethereally melancholy "Lament for Henrietta," heard as Susanna describes her
tormented childhood, begins with a hint of the same interval, suggesting the
connection between Susanna's condition and her conflicted attachment to the
black woman who took the place of her also mentally disturbed biological mother,
and with whom her father was having an affair. This lovely melody is first heard
in solo flute, also with dreamy reverb, and later in full strings.

As the film moves from its opening sequences in the mythic Indiana of the hero's
youth, to his coming of age in the Civil War and a disturbing marriage which
ends in Susanna's (rather contrived) death, Green's score accordingly develops
in depth and complexity. The orchestration, ably realized by Green's staff of
six assistants, is relatively traditional, with an emphasis on strings and a
well-utilized reed section, and an escalating use of brass in the latter
sequences. But along with this basic instrumentation, the modernist tone of
Lockridge's novel is also evoked by the use of modern recording technology.

Most obvious is the aural motif for the Golden Raintree, an
electronically-concocted shimmer of bells, notated by a cymbal-style "X" with an
ensuing downward glissando sign in the score. This sound, which Green
arbitrarily named the "Jimjik" - "the equivalent of 'thing-a-ma-bob,' merely an
identifying handle" - was separately recorded and given its own channel in the
final mix (when it was added to the previously-recorded orchestral tracks), and
is just one example of the forward-looking recording techniques that make
"Raintree" an early masterpiece of multi-track studio scoring and overdubbing.
Green described the mechanics of the effect and its technological application
within the score: "A good toy glockenspiel, scraped from top to bottom by two
pairs of brushes (one pair following the other - two percussionists, of course)
produced the effect. On the recording stage, to the naked ear, it was virtually
inaudible. It achieves the characteristic heard on the sound track via multi
magnification and maximum reverberation (echo chamber). The exact method of
producing it was later worked out by trial and error on the recording stage." 12
The "Jimjik" effect is usually heard to the mystical parallel triads heard
between the first (A) section of the "Song of Raintree County" and its bridge
(B).

The score's technological aspects are particularly notable in the Southern
sequences when Susanna's dementia begins to escalate, notably in the eerily
nostalgic "Burned-Out Mansion" cue, made-up of several individually recorded
takes - male voices and banjo, a plantation polka for strings, and a basic
orchestral track - all of which was superimposed on tape (to click tracks
carefully indicated in the score with mathematical precision). Electronic
enhancement also evokes the frankly mystical elements in the film's first third:
the reverberated voices in "Johnny's Search For The Raintree," and the similarly
enhanced harmonica, female voices, and sensuous alto flute in the "July Picnic"
cues. Green's technical notations - "alto sax, pure tone in echo chamber" - are
an integral part of his detailed orchestral sketches.

Green touched upon of the mysteries of studio composing and recording which are
such an integral part of the total "Raintree" sound in a reference to the motif
for Susanna's favorite doll, Jeemie, a motif closely related to her dementia
music: "The doll motif, recorded as a separate entity, was composed and
orchestrally arranged in such as manner as to be played against the basic Mad
Theme during the re-recording or dubbing process. In other words, that which
emerges on the sound track as a single piece of contrapuntal music, was never
played as such on the recording stage. The arithmetical niceties of timing,
meter, and the like are sufficiently intricate to form the basis of a separate
article."

Some of the complexities of the process can be seen in a description of the
collaboration between composer and sound engineer involved in creating one of
the brief (2.21) doll cues made up of two separately recorded tracks overdubbed
to play back simultaneously, (as Green described above). For "Where Is That
Doll" (reel 12, parts 3 and 3X,  or numbers G51 and G52 in Green's personal
score), Green explored both the technical and psychological aspects of his music
and motifs in a note to recording engineer Bill Steinkamp: "This piece (G52)
works along with the basic music track (G51) starting and ending as above
indicated. This is the doll motif and works in and out (of G51) as a kind of a
'sick haze' - barely heard, yet there. We first become aware of it when Susanna
says, 'Where is that doll?' As Johnny says, 'Come to bed' - we loose it. As she
says, 'No, I must find it,' it somehow is there again, having started to sneak
in on the second of the two 'no's' that precede the complete sentence. As Johnny
says, 'Don't you remember, etc.' it's gone again. In the silence following
Johnny's '.... a long time ago' it is heard a couple more times, and is gone as
J. puts arm around Susanna to lead her away." Green's note concludes with an
emphatic comment on balance: "At no time is this track as loud as the track it
is running against!!!" Detailed timings are attched to the notes for these cues,
as they are for most of the cues in Green's first volume: 0:20, Susanna: "Where
is that doll?", 0:50, Johnny puts arm around Su to lead her, etc.

In his "Film/TV Music" article Green cited Steinkamp and his contributions to
the score: "Any discussion of the music score of 'Raintree County' would be
incomplete without enthusiastic thanks to the artist who was at the electronic
controls during the re-recording process, William Steinkamp. It is his masterful
combining of all the sound elements of the picture that brings the music to its
completed state on the sound track." All of which reveals how the composer
consummately merged a lyrical and essentially traditional style with "modernist"
elements, both stylistic and complexly technical, to vividly mirror Lockridge's
wildly ambitious literary fusion of the same dissonant perspectives. Ultimately,
Green's magisterial score, with its free-floating, perceptive intermeshing of
character and emotional leit motifs, is, in fact, the only element in the film
that genuinely reflects and pays homage to Lockridge's immensely poignant,
homegrown adaptation of Joyce's Olympian stream-of-consciousness meditation on
mundane reality.

Larry Lockridge also commented on the score in a letter to the writer: "Green
should have won the Academy Award for the 'Raintree County' score, but the movie
itself probably killed his chances. I still remember the thrill I felt as a kid
hearing that score before seeing the movie. If only the movie had been the
score's equal! I met Green at the premiere in Louisville (when he was still
'Johnny'), and again many years later here in New York, where some of his music,
including portions of the RC score, were performed at Carnegie Hall. It is odd,
but true, as you say, that despite the movie's badness a sort of charisma
attaches to it. Green thought his score his own best work." In the same letter
Lockridge also noted the possibility of a new dramatization of "Raintree" as a
TV mini-series.

In response to a letter written to Green long before the recognition of film
music had become fashionable among both fans and academics, the composer himself
wrote to the author of this article:

         John Green
         10 Vicarage Gardens
         London WS England
         24 March 1968

         My dear Mr. Care -

              "I am deeply grateful for your extravagant compliments about my
RAINTREE COUNTY score, and I am amazed and delighted by the detailed knowledge
of the score that your compliments reflect. I was particularly gratified that
your favourite spots in the score include several of mine.
              Your references to aesthetic reward or lack of same in connection
with the writing of film music triggers so large a topic as to rule out
discussion in a letter of this kind.
              Your reference to the hit songs that I wrote prior to composing the
score for RAINTREE leads me to tell you that a large part of my professional
life has been spent in the making of music of all kind for films. I started as a
rehearsal pianist at Paramount in December of 1929, at the age of just 21.
              Yes, I did read Ross Lockridge's novel prior to writing the score.
              I wrote about two hours and eighteen minutes of music for the film
of which two hours and ten minutes are in the released print. In actual
composing and orchestrating time it took me about four months, working
around-the-clock seven days a week.
              Since 14 April '67 full-time (and from July 7 '66 up to 14 April
last part-time), I have been at work, not as a composer, but as the Music
Director, adaptor, arranger and orchestrator of the music and lyrics of Lionel
Bart for the film OLIVER!. I shall be hard at it on this project and its
companion phonograph LP here in London though mid-October of this year.
              I left MGM in March of 1958, have been free lance ever since and
have done most of my film work during this period for Columbia.
              Repeated thanks to you for the joy that you have given me, and my
very best wishes to you for success in your own musical work."

      In reference to Green's none-compositional film work (the pressures of
which Green himself refers to in the above letter), author Tony Thomas observed:
".... if Green hadn't been so busy with musicals he would have been one of the
industry's foremost composers." "Raintree County" verifies this speculation,
though it's sadly ironic that Green's sole major score was put to the service of
such a mundane, though admittedly, if only in retrospect, charismatic film.
      But Green's vivid musical evocation of the myth of the Golden Raintree
remains a durable lyric masterpiece of the Hollywood studio system's protracted
golden twilight, one still capable of stirringly conjuring the pantheistic
sunlight and Gothic shadows of a unique epic of literary Americana: The Great
American Film Score for what came very close to being The Great American Novel,
if emphatically not The Great American Movie.

Ross CARE, September, 1995- January, 1996