Ray Charles is the stage name of Charles Raymond Offenberg (born September 13, 1918, in Chicago, Illinois), an American musician, songwriter, and vocal conductor. He is best known for a series of easy listening record albums which he produced in the 1950s and 1960s as the Ray Charles Singers. This vocal group also sang backup on most of the recordings of Perry Como from 1950 to 1987, and Charles and his singers also appeared with Como in his live performances and on television. The Ray Charles Singers (with Charles featured prominently as lead male vocalist) sang the theme song to the television series Three's Company ("Come and Knock on Our Door"). He is sometimes known humorously as "The Other Ray Charles" to distinguish him from the great soul musician of the same name.

The Ray Charles Singers had a number of hit singles and albums, reaching number three on the pop charts in 1964 with one of the most successful easy listening singles of the '60s, "Love Me with All Your Heart (Cuando Caliente el Sol),"

As a songwriter, Charles is best known for the choral anthem "Fifty Nifty United States," in which he set the names of the states to music in alphabetical order. He also wrote some Christmas songs and other special musical material associated with Como. He has also worked in television with Bob Hope, Glen Campbell, and the Muppets. He continues to serve as a musical consultant to television programs.

---

From: Patricia Yorton
Sent: Thursday, March 27, 2008 8:33 AM
To: Adam Pace, Jack Yorton
Subject: Marian McPartland Turns 90 In Grand Jazz Style

Marian McPartland turns 90 in grand jazz style

By Charles J. Gans
Associated Press NEW YORK

Marian McPartland celebrated her 90th birthday in a style befitting the
"Grande Dame of Piano Jazz" with a little help from friends including
Norah Jones and Wynton Marsalis at Jazz at Lincoln Center.
"Getting up here is really a job," quipped McPartland, who has been
slowed by arthritis in her legs and is recovering from a fractured pelvis, after being assisted onstage. But the years fell away once her hands touched the keyboard.

She started both sets Wednesday night - on the eve of her actual
birthday - with the traditional jazz tune "Royal Garden Blues," which she used to play in the band led by her late husband, cornetist Jimmy
McPartland. The British-born pianist met the Chicago jazzman when they were entertaining troops in Belgium in 1944 and he introduced his war bride to American jazz audiences in the late 1940s.

McPartland also played selections from her latest album, Twilight World, showcasing her stylistic range and encyclopedic approach to the jazz repertoire - from solo piano versions of Burt Bacharach's "Alfie" and the obscure Alec Wilder ballad "Blackberry Winter" to avant-gardist Ornette Coleman's twisted blues "Turn Around," performed with her trio.

Jones, who returned to her jazz roots by singing "Blame It on My Youth," "The Nearness of You," and "Yesterdays," recalled she was 13 when she first heard the pianist at a Dallas jazz festival and spent many hours during her high school years listening to bootleg tapes of McPartland's Piano Jazz, the longest-running cultural show on National Public Radio at 29 years and counting. "Now thinking back [that] seems cool, but at the time . . . you killed my social life," Jones joked. "But happy birthday and I'm so happy to be here and I love you madly."

Marsalis let his trumpet do the talking as he swung his way through Jerome Kern's "All the Things You Are" accompanied by McPartland's trio. Afterward, the pianist remarked: "I first played with him when he was 15. He was as good then as he is now, maybe not as cheeky."

Singer Karrin Allyson highlighted McPartland's talents as a composer by performing several of the pianist's originals, including "Twilight World"
and "There'll Be Other Times."

Other birthday bash guests included violinist Regina Carter, singer Jeanie Bryson, and several generations of jazz pianists - Jason Moran, Bill Charlap and Kenny Barron - who filled in when McPartland needed a break.

The audience shared slices of her piano-shaped cake and her NPR colleagues presented her with a "Marian McPuppet" in her image, which McPartland joked had "the wrong shade of lipstick."

"Each week Marian touches our hearts and delights our souls, and the truth is that you assure us that even when wars rage and banks collapse and husbands cheat, there is still music and beauty in the world," said NPR vice president Margaret Low Smith.

After Allyson and trumpeter Jeremy Pelt teamed with McPartland's trio for a rousing finale on the blues "Centerpiece," the audience serenaded the pianist with a chorus of "Happy Birthday" accompanied by the birthday girl  herself.

Pat

---

Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your homepage.

Gene Puerling, 78;
vocal arranger led the
innovative Hi-Lo's
quartet

By Valerie J. Nelson,
Los Angeles Times Staff
Writer

Gene Puerling, leader
of the innovative vocal
quartet the Hi-Lo's and
a noted vocal arranger
whose sophisticated
harmonies influenced the
sound of other groups,
including the Beach
Boys, died March 25
[2008]. He was 78.

Puerling, a longtime
resident of San
Anselmo, California,
died of complications
of diabetes at a Bay
Area hospital, said Don
Shelton, who was a
member of the Hi-Lo's.

Formed in Hollywood
[California] in 1953,
the Hi-Lo's were
"frighteningly
talented" and "could
flawlessly execute
seemingly impossible
vocal leaps," according
to an appreciation on
the website
allaboutjazz.com.

Their rich sound sprang
from Puerling
arrangements that could
make other performers
swoon. Jazz pianist and
TV host Steve Allen is
said to have called the
Hi-Lo's "the best vocal
group of all time."
Singer Bing Crosby
reportedly said: "These
guys are so good they
can whisper in harmony."

Puerling "exhumed songs
from the past and
reinvigorated them,"
creating "a catalog of
grand American
standards," Don Gold, a
former Downbeat
magazine editor, wrote
in 2002 in the Chicago
Tribune.

One of the Hi-Lo's
first
recordings, "Georgia,"
experienced some
success, and the group
received critical
praise for pop
renditions of such
classic jazz tunes
as "Fascinatin' Rhythm"
and "Skylark."

Their 1956
album "Suddenly It's
the Hi-Lo's" briefly
became one of the
Top 20 albums and two
years later
another, "And All That
Jazz," was highly
praised. Despite being
critical favorites, the
group never achieved
great commercial
success.

Clark Burroughs, the
tenor whose range as
the Hi-Lo's lead
vocalist freed Puerling
to write daring
arrangements, told The
Times that Puerling's
charts were "complex
and hilarious and
beautiful -- and
difficult. He could
make our four voices
sound like a brass
section."

In addition to Brian
Wilson of the Beach
Boys, other groups have
cited the Hi-Lo's as an
influence. They include
the Mamas and the
Papas, the Gatlin
Brothers, Take 6 and
Manhattan Transfer,
according to
biographical sources.

Puerling won a Grammy
in 1981 for his
arrangement of "A
Nightingale Sang in
Berkeley Square" for
the Manhattan Transfer.

Eugene Thomas Puerling
was born March 31,
1929, in Milwaukee,
Wisconsin.

In 1950, he moved to
Los Angeles
[California] and soon
met Burroughs.
With baritones Bob
Strasen, with whom
Puerling sang in
Milwaukee, and
Bob Morse, they formed
the Hi-Los, named for
the group's vocal range
and differences in
height. At 5 feet, 7
inches, bass-baritone
Puerling was one of
the "Lo's." Shelton, a
tenor, joined the group
after Strasen left in
1959.

In the mid-1950s, the
Hi-Lo's toured with
Judy Garland. They
joined the cast of
Rosemary Clooney's
syndicated variety show
in 1956 and cut an
album, "Ring Around the
Rosie," with the singer.

Mitch Miller of
Columbia Records
unsuccessfully
pressured Puerling to
simplify his
arrangements to create
a more radio-friendly
sound. When Columbia
dropped them in 1961,
another fan -- Frank
Sinatra -- invited the
Hi-Lo's to record for
his fledgling Reprise
label.

The Hi-Los broke up in
1964 but reconvened in
the late 1970s and
performed into the
1990s.

In 1967 -- with Shelton
and singers Bonnie
Herman and Len
Dresslar -- Puerling
formed Singers
Unlimited and produced
advertising jingles.
The Chicago-based a
cappella vocal group
recorded 14 albums,
relying on Puerling
arrangements that were
models of overdubbing,
making four voices
sound like nearly 30.

"There was only one
writer like Gene
Puerling," Shelton
said. "He was
untrained, unschooled
but just had this
instinct, this
unbelievable proclivity
for beautiful sounds."

Puerling is survived by
his wife, Helen.



http://www.latimes.com/n
ews/obituaries/la-me-
puerling2apr02,1,6859731
.story

http://www.singers.com/j
azz/singersunlimited.htm
l

'Laugh-In' comic Dick Martin dead at 86

• LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Dick Martin, the zany half of the comedy team whose "Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In" took television by storm in the 1960s, making stars of Goldie Hawn and Lily Tomlin and creating such national catch-phrases as "Sock it to me!" has died. He was 86.

Martin, who went on to become one of television's busiest directors after splitting with Dan Rowan in the late 1970s, died Saturday night of respiratory complications at a hospital in Santa Monica, family spokesman Barry Greenberg said.

"He had had some pretty severe respiratory problems for many years, and he had pretty much stopped breathing a week ago," Greenberg said.

Martin had lost the use of one of his lungs as a teenager, and needed supplemental oxygen for most of the day in his later years.

He was surrounded by family and friends when he died just after 6 p.m., Greenberg said.

"Laugh-in," which debuted in January 1968, was unlike any comedy-variety show before it. Rather than relying on a series of tightly scripted song-and-dance segments, it offered up a steady, almost stream-of-consciousness run of non-sequitur jokes, political satire and madhouse antics from a cast of talented young actors and comedians that also included Ruth Buzzi, Arte Johnson, Henry Gibson, Jo Anne Worley and announcer Gary Owens.

Presiding over it all were Rowan and Martin, the veteran nightclub comics whose standup banter put their own distinct spin on the show.

Like all straight men, Rowan provided the voice of reason, striving to correct his partner's absurdities. Martin, meanwhile, was full of bogus, often risque theories about life, which he appeared to hold with unwavering certainty.

Against this backdrop, audiences were taken from scene to scene by quick, sometimes psychedelic-looking visual cuts, where they might see Hawn, Worley and other women dancing in bathing suits with political slogans, or sometimes just nonsense, painted on their bodies. Other times, Gibson, clutching a flower, would recite nonsensical poetry or Johnson would impersonate a comical Nazi spy.

"Laugh-In" astounded audiences and critics alike. For two years, the show topped the Nielsen ratings, and its catchphrases-- "Sock it to me," "You bet your sweet bippy" and "Look that up in your Funk and Wagnall's" -- were recited across the country.

Stars such as John Wayne and Kirk Douglas were delighted to make brief appearances, and even Richard Nixon, running for president in 1968, dropped in to shout a befuddled sounding, "Sock it to me!" His opponent, Vice President Hubert Humphrey, was offered equal time but declined because his handlers thought it would appear undignified.

Rowan and Martin landed the show just as their comedy partnership was approaching its zenith and the nation's counterculture was expanding into the mainstream.

The two were both struggling actors when they met in 1952. Rowan had sold his interest in a used car dealership to take acting lessons, and Martin, who had written gags for TV shows and comedians, was tending bar in Los Angeles to pay the rent.

Rowan, hearing Martin was looking for a comedy partner, visited him at the bar, where he found him eating a banana.

"Why are you eating a banana?" he asked.

"If you've ever eaten here, you'd know what's with the banana," he replied, and a comedy team was born.

Although their early gigs in Los Angeles' San Fernando Valley were often performed gratis, they donned tuxedos for them and put on an air of success.

"We were raw," Martin recalled years later, "but we looked good together and we were funny."

They gradually worked up to the top night spots in New York, Miami and Las Vegas and began to appear regularly on television.

In 1966, they provided the summer replacement for "The Dean Martin Show." Within two years, they were headlining their own show.

The novelty of "Laugh-In" diminished with each season, however, and as major players such as Hawn and Tomlin moved on to bigger careers, interest in the series faded.

After the show folded in 1973, Rowan and Martin capitalized on their fame with a series of high-paid engagements around the country. They parted amicably in 1977.

"Dan has diabetes, and his doctor advised him to cool it," Martin told The Associated Press at the time.

Rowan, a sailing enthusiast, spent his last years touring the canals of Europe on a houseboat. He died in 1987.

Martin moved onto the game-show circuit, but quickly tired of it. After he complained about the lack of challenges in his career, fellow comic Bob Newhart's agent suggested he take up directing.

He was reluctant at first, but after observing on "The Bob Newhart Show," he decided to try. He would recall later that it was "like being thrown into the deep end of the swimming pool and being told to sink or swim."

Soon he was one of the industry's busiest TV directors, working on numerous episodes of "Newhart" as well as such shows as "In the Heat of the Night," "Archie Bunker's Place" and "Family Ties."

Born into a middle-class family in Battle Creek, Mich., Martin had worked in a Ford auto assembly plant after high school.

After an early failed marriage, he was, for years, a confirmed bachelor. He finally settled down in middle age, marrying Dolly Read, a former bunny at the Playboy Club in London. Survivors include his wife and two sons, actor Richard Martin and Cary Martin.

At Martin's request, there will be no funeral, Greenberg said.

Martin lost the use of his right lung when he was 17, something that never bothered him until his final years, when he required oxygen 18 hours a day.

Arriving for a party celebrating his 80th birthday, he fainted and was treated by doctors and paramedics. The party continued, however, and he cracked, "Boy, did I make an entrance!"

This story was sent to you by: Lou

Bill Finegan passes; Sauter-Finegan Orchestra set new musical standards.

--------------------
Arranger expanded jazz orchestra concept
--------------------

Creator of scores for big-band giants Dorsey, Miller experimented with genre

By Jocelyn Y. Stewart
Tribune Newspapers

June 10 2008

Bill Finegan, an architect of the big-band sounds of Tommy Dorsey and Glenn
Miller who later traded in commercial success to co-create the Sauter-Finegan
Orchestra, which produced music that still stands as some of the most
experimental of the swing era, has died. He was 91.

The complete article can be viewed at:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/services/newspaper/printedition/tuesday/metro/chi-\
finegan_obitjun10,0,6934383.story

Visit chicagotribune.com at http://www.chicagotribune.com

Lou Teicher, of Ferrante & Teicher, Popular Piano Duo of '60s, Dies
at 83
By BRUCE WEBER
Lou Teicher, half of the piano duo Ferrante & Teicher, whose florid
and sentimental versions of movie themes and love songs made them
gods of easy listening and earned them wide popularity beginning in
the 1960s, died on Sunday in Highlands, N.C. He was 83 and lived in
Sarasota, Fla.

The cause was heart failure, said Scott W. Smith, Ferrante &
Teicher's manager.

A classically trained pianist who was something of a prodigy, Mr.
Teicher was a musician of extraordinary dexterity, the speed and
clarity of his and his partner's playing being among their crowd-
pleasing qualities. The two met as children at the Juilliard School
of Music, and their friendship became a professional team in the mid-
1940s. Eventually, with their hit recordings of the themes from the
films "The Apartment" and "Exodus," and "Tonight," from "West Side
Story," among others, they became known as "the movie theme team."
And for their appearances onstage or on television in matching flashy
outfits and at the keyboards of imposing instruments, they were
called "the grand twins of the twin grands."

Louis Milton Teicher was born in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., on Aug. 24, 1924.
By the time he was 6, his family was living in New York City, and
young Lou was enrolled at Juilliard. His future partner, Arthur
Ferrante, then 9, was already there. Mr. Teicher graduated in 1940
and received an advanced degree in 1943. Both he and Mr. Ferrante
joined the faculty. They began performing together in 1947, initially
as a purely classical duo.

Eventually, of course, they became famous for a kind of virtuosic
kitsch: grandiose, emotional playing, embellished with glissandi,
spectacular arpeggios and a back-and-forth communication that often
made it seem as if the pianos themselves were conversing.

"Although we were two individuals, at the twin pianos our brains
worked as one," Mr. Ferrante, now 86, said in a statement after Mr.
Teicher's death.

Playing alone or with orchestras, with a wide repertory of pop tunes,
show music, movie themes and modernized classical scores, the two men
performed more than 5,200 concerts; made more than 200 television
appearances; entertained Presidents John F. Kennedy, Richard M. Nixon
and Ronald Reagan; and from 1951 to 2001 recorded about 150 albums,
the last dozen or so for their own recording company, somewhat
paradoxically called Avant-Garde Records.

Actually, in the early days of their partnership, they did have
experimental tendencies. Influenced by John Cage, they made several
recordings with "prepared pianos," that is, pianos with objects like
cardboard wedges, rubber stops and sandpaper inserted among the
strings to create a variety of unexpected sounds. This was in the
1950s, when, in addition to making what they called their gimmick
recordings, they were playing 100 or so concert dates a year. At the
time, they appeared in small community halls where the programming
was strictly classical and they performed two-piano arrangements of
works by composers from Bach to Rachmaninoff.

Mr. Teicher is survived by his wife, Betty; three children, Richard,
of Linden, N.J., Susan, of Urbana Ill., and David, of Westport,
Conn.; and four grandchildren.

It was in 1959 that the producer Don Costa moved from ABC Records to
United Artists, taking Ferrante and Teicher with him. There the two
capitalized on the record company's affiliation with a movie company;
Mr. Costa was being sent the scores from United Artists films, and
when he received the theme from "The Apartment," he brought it to the
two pianists; it became their first big hit.

"All of a sudden," said Mr. Smith, their manager, "they'd show up at
some small theater, or a church or wherever they were supposed to
play, and people would be lined up outside the doors to get in, and
they'd be saying, `Are you going to play `The Apartment'?' " Mr.
Smith added: "And they'd say, `No, we're going to play Bach and
Tchaikovsky.' And the people would say, `But we came to hear `The
Apartment!' Literally overnight, they had to come up with a whole new
two-hour program. They said, `People think we're pop stars!' "

http://featuresblogs.chicagotribune.com/entertainment_popmachine/2008/09
/that-voiceover.html

Cleveland - The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame will pay tribute to
the "father of the electric guitar" this fall.

Les Paul will be honored at the annual American Music Masters series,
a weeklong event that begins Nov. 10, Rock Hall officials said today.
A tribute concert - artists will be named later - is scheduled Nov.
15 at Cleveland's State Theater.

Paul, 93, a Waukesha, Wis., native, is hoping to attend, said Rock
Hall President and CEO Terry Stewart.

"You have an inductee who in some ways maybe has had one of the
biggest influences of all our inductees with the creation of his
solid-body guitar, overdubbing ... not to mention his musical styling
and his ability to play," Stewart said. "He's become an idol and an
icon to people in the rock world, as well as people in jazz and
popular music."

Paul began playing guitar as a child and by 13 was performing
semiprofessionally as a country guitarist. He later made his mark as
a jazz-pop musician, recording hits such as "How High the Moon" with
his wife, singer Colleen Summers.

He built a solid-body electric guitar in 1941 - an invention born
from his frustration that audiences were unable to hear him play.

In 1952, Gibson introduced the Les Paul model, which became the
instrument of choice for musicians including Duane Allman, Eric
Clapton and Jimmy Page.

"It's not just his innovation and his musical playing, but sort of
the residual effects of that guitar," Stewart said. "It's become the
beginning point for so many people in music, particularly rock music."

Paul still performs weekly at the Iridium Jazz Club in New York City.
He was inducted into the early influence category of the Rock Hall in
1988.

Paul is only the second living recipient of the annual American Music
Masters award, which began in 1996 to pay tribute to artists who
helped change American culture. Jerry Lee Lewis was the first living
recipient in 2007. Past recipients include Woody Guthrie, Muddy
Waters and Sam Cooke.

WLIP AM 1050 www.wlip.com is pleased to announce the Music of the Stars is getting more airtime. We'll have details in a day or so.

Special guest in the 9:00 AM hour on the October 12 Music of the Stars: Helen Breitenbach of the Tremper High School Golden Strings ensemble and the music of the Golden Strings as they prepare for their European tour.  

Also: more Halloween features and a Columbus Day voyage.

Great news:
the Music of
the Stars will
now be
rebroadcast
over WLIP AM
1050 and on
www.wlip.com
each Sunday
afternoon from
Noon until 4
PM CDT.

Our excellent
audience
ratings and
the support of
WLIP AM 1050
makes this
possible.

Thanks to all!

Lou

Sunday's Music of the Stars will be our annual Halloween Spooktacular. (And not for the easily frightened.)

This is lengthy, but interesting.

Taking Movie Music Seriously, Like It or Not

By DAVID SCHIFF

Dean Wong
Paul Chihara at a rehearsal in 1992. "Things changed for me when people told me
I wasn't weird but postmodern," he said.

OR two years in a row, the Academy Award for best film score has gone to a
classical composer: first John Corigliano for "The Red Violin," then Tan Dun
for "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon." While cynics claim that this is the film
industry's way of advertising its high-art pretensions, Hollywood may really be
ahead of New York in acknowledging that the opposition between film music and
concert music is a phantom of the last century. Today the two styles constantly
interact. John Williams's scores for George Lucas's "Star Wars" movies and for
Steven Spielberg's "Jaws" and "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," which
resurrected the symphonic style for film in the 70's, have also exerted a huge
influence on the work of young concert composers. Philip Glass's music for
"Koyaanisqatsi" made Minimalism an essential component of any film composer's
stylistic vocabulary.

Now the American Composers Orchestra is catching up with the Motion Picture
Academy, presenting a "Hollywood" concert this afternoon at Carnegie Hall that
culminates a two-week series of small concerts and film screenings. The
program, conducted by Dennis Russell Davies, includes music for two camp
classics, the Hollywood "exposé" "The Bad and the Beautiful" (David Raksin,
composer) and Alfred Hitchcock's Freudian whodunit "Spellbound" (Miklos Rozsa);
the cult sci-fi thriller "The Thing" (Dimitri Tiomkin); and Hitchcock's
unavoidable "Psycho" (Bernard Herrmann). Except for "Psycho," none of these is
a pinnacle of cinematic art, but each score is a milestone in film music.

The orchestra's warm embrace of Hollywood may be a deceptive sign of a thaw in
the longstanding cold war between the musical cultures of the two coasts. Last
year, when Washington had other scandals to think about, a minor Beltway drama
— call it Kamengate — erupted around a concert by the National Symphony
Orchestra that included the premiere of Michael Kamen's "New Moon in the Old
Moon's Arms." Mr. Kamen is a Juilliard- trained composer of many film scores,
including "Mr. Holland's Opus." But for Philip Kennicott, the music critic of
The Washington Post, he represents everything wrong with music today.

Mr. Kennicott dismissed Mr. Kamen's symphony as "pretentious and pernicious
tonal tripe . . . scored in the usual sodden and overripe Hollywood manner."
And he blasted the National Symphony for commissioning a "well-remunerated
Hollywood hack" who "doesn't need to be dipping into the paltry amount that's
available to composers of serious music." Mr. Kennicott seemed to assume that
commissions, like welfare payments, should be based on need. And he was nearly
as harsh on works by non-Hollywood composers, criticizing Richard Danielpour's
"Voice of Remembrance" as "a succession of familiar moods and feelings." In
other words, it sounded like film music.
Mr. Kamen's mediocre score hardly deserved so much ink, but Mr. Kennicott's
bile, like Mr. Kamen's music, sounded recycled. The classical world's
anti-Hollywood bias goes back to the dawn of film music in the 1930's, when Max
Steiner established the genre with "King Kong." During the Depression, New York
and Hollywood contrasted starkly. Economically, New York was broke, Hollywood
was rich. Politically, New York was left, Hollywood was right.

But sound movies were new, and Hollywood needed composers; a musical gold rush
was on. As lights dimmed on Broadway, Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern and the
Gershwins headed west, as did Copland, Herrmann, Alex North and Jerome Moross.
While the tunesmiths happily adjusted to life in paradise, modernist composers
like Copland were put off by the power politics of the studio system and the
lush late-Romantic style of established studio composers like Steiner and Erich
Wolfgang Korngold.

In a sense, Hollywood was the new Versailles or Eszterhaza. The studio moguls
were princes of patronage, but composers had grown used to neglect and
forgotten the advantages and disadvantages of steady employment. Every composer
who got close enough to dance with the devil had a Hollywood horror story to
send back east.
Disney's "Fantasia" (1940) turned Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring" into "an
unresisting imbecility," in the composer's phrase, with drastic cuts and
"Jurassic Park" animation. Since the score lacked copyright protection because
of the Russian Revolution, Stravinsky had no choice but to accept Disney's
modest remuneration and immodest editorial insults. Still, he continued to seek
out film projects, with little success. (Music he wrote for "The Commandos
Strike at Dawn" in 1943 ended up as "Four Norwegian Moods," also to be played
by the American Composers Orchestra.)

Stravinsky's archrival, Schoenberg, fared no better. Irving Thalberg hoped that
Schoenberg's name would lend intellectual cachet to "The Good Earth" (1937),
the MGM prestige epic based on Pearl Buck's novel. Whether in a state of
delusion or merely seeking an escape hatch, Schoenberg wanted to compose
pitches and rhythms for the actors' lines and demanded final editing rights. He
claimed to be relieved when the collaboration fell through, saying, "It would
have been the end of me."
For the oater "Duel in the Sun" (Vanguard, 1947), David Selznick demanded that
Tiomkin whistle first a love theme, then an orgasm theme. William Wyler
replaced Copland's title music for "The Heiress" (Paramount, 1949) as soon as
the composer left town. There are more stories, and worse.

In a 1940 New York Times article on film music, Copland praised the new genre
but attacked Steiner's 19th-century style, his use of leitmotifs and his
dependence on "mickey-mousing." Although Copland continued to work successfully
in Hollywood through 1948, his writings confirmed the East Coast view that the
industry was dominated by studio hacks working in a reactionary idiom. By
contrast, Hollywood honored Copland with an Oscar (for "The Heiress," despite
its non-Copland title music) and quickly appropriated his lean, modernist style
for psychological dramas and the grander horse operas.

Composers who remained in Hollywood were given the cold shoulder by New York.
Paul Chihara said recently that Herrmann and Rozsa bitterly resented the
refusal of the concert world to take their music seriously. But Mr. Chihara,
whose "Clouds (. . . From Out of the Past)" receives its premiere in the
American Composers Orchestra program, exemplifies the way times have changed. A
student of Nadia Boulanger with a doctorate in composition from Cornell, he has
won numerous prizes and commissions for his classical scores. He has also
composed for more than 80 films, including "Crossing Delancey" and "Prince of
the City," and television series, including "China Beach" and the current A & E
series "100 Centre Street."

The smoky, sinuous title trumpet solo for "100 Centre Street" begins like a
film noir cliché but takes a series of surprising harmonic turns that sound
more like the devices of a concert composer. "I used to think I was writing in
two different styles, but now they have come together," Mr. Chihara said.
"Things changed for me when people told me I wasn't weird but postmodern."

Mr. Chihara, who teaches at U.C.L.A., is in constant demand as a guest lecturer
at university music departments and conservatories that used to ignore film
music. For either artistic or economic reasons, the old stigma against
commercial music has disappeared. "Today composition teachers want to make sure
their students know how to write for movies," Mr. Chihara said.

Film music and concert music are converging in style and technology.
Postmodernism, a style that emerged in the early 1970's, dominates American
concert music today, but it took a while to be properly understood. George
Crumb, David Del Tredici and Mr. Corigliano were, like Mr. Chihara, postmodern
before the term was invented. They all mixed styles fearlessly and experimented
with amplification. In his Clarinet Concerto (1977), Mr. Corigliano, whose East
Coast credentials were just recertified by a Pulitzer Prize for his Symphony
No. 2 for String Orchestra, placed instruments around the hall, less in
imitation of Gabrieli and Ives than in anticipation of THX and surround sound.

Whereas modernist music emphasized structural and stylistic integrity,
postmodern music is a polystylistic hybrid, mingling and matching incongruous
elements with a heavy dose of irony — just like film music. Listen to Franz
Waxman's title track for "Sunset Boulevard," and then listen to John Adams's
"Chairman Dances": they are not just stylistically similar; they are virtually
the same piece.

Mr. Raksin's score for "The Bad and the Beautiful" (MGM, 1952) shows how much
composers today have learned from the Hollywood masters. The film itself is a
couple of tall steps below such behind-the- scenes sagas as "Sunset Boulevard"
and "Singin' in the Rain," though not without its gripping moments. Teetering
between conscious and unconscious self-parody, it shows a brutish genius
director, played by Kirk Douglas, abusing his closest friends and lovers to
make "great" movies.
Pauline Kael described "The Bad and the Beautiful" as a "spangled, overwrought
piece of Hollywood self-analysis" but also wrote that the director, Vincente
Minnelli, gave it a "hysterical stylishness." A lot of that stylishness and
hysteria is Mr. Raksin's doing. He captures the studio's seductive glamour with
a romantic theme not far below his classic, "Laura"; then, as the film tours
the backlots, he serves up 15-second pastiches of B-movie scores. How many
"serious" composers could evoke a cardboard cowboy-and-Indian film or a
Saturday morning science fiction potboiler in such a fleeting window of
opportunity?

Mr. Raksin's underscore itself is a series of ironic allusions: here a little
Gershwin, there a little Ellington. In one scene, Mr. Douglas carries a limp
Lana Turner in his arms against a backdrop of stormy skies. The music surges
with passion in the grandest Steineresque manner. Then Mr. Douglas drops Ms.
Turner into a swimming pool to sober her up, and we realize that Mr. Raksin has
been parodying Hollywood's dream-factory style to sober us up as well.
Interestingly, the most dramatic scene in the film, Ms. Turner driving off in
terror from Mr. Douglas's ultimate act of cruelty, has no music: the ultimate
form of musical irony.

Mr. Raksin's ironic juxtapositions of style make him the grandfather of current
postmodernists like John Zorn and Michael Daugherty. But the collapse of the
wall separating film music and art music may be a question of technology more
than of style. Because it depends on recording, Hollywood has always been in
the forefront of musical science, sculpturing and styling performances through
microphone placement, overdubbing and editing. Both Rozsa's "Spellbound" and
Tiomkin's "Thing" feature that quintessentially eerie electronic instrument,
the theremin. Gregory Peck's amnesiac character in "Spellbound" seems to be
suffering from theremin on the brain as well as what Ingrid Bergman keeps
calling his "guilt complex."
Sixty years ago Copland enthusiastically reported on the technology of film
scoring, the fine art of coordinating music and image. But today only a few
composers — notably, John Williams — fit their music to the screen action in
the time-honored way. The artistry with which Mr. Williams's Oscar-nominated
score for "The Patriot" minutely matches the action proves the value of the
traditional method, but both the artistry and the method may already be
anachronistic.

"There really is no such thing as Hollywood music anymore," Mr. Chihara said.
"It's all done in a garage in North Hollywood." Composers are now expected to
produce the music, not just write it. Most of the music you hear on television
and at the movies uses sound synthesis instead of live performers or in
addition to them. The blend of live and synthesized sounds is a signature of
Hans Zimmer, whose Electronica-does- Holst score for "Gladiator" was nominated
for an Oscar this year. Synthesized music is cheaper, and young people, the
target audience, prefer its sound.

Today the audio and video components of a film come together not on a
soundstage but on a computer screen. Editing software allows composers to
stretch or compress the music as needed. The new technologies may reinforce the
old prejudice, resurrected by Mr. Kennicott, that film composers lack
traditional musical technique. Although composers like Mr. Kamen and James
Horner ("Titanic") have full conservatory credentials, it is quite possible
these days to compose and produce film music with little traditional musical
training. The industry is full of notorious "hummers," whose careers depend on
armies of unnamed technical assistants.

But synthesizers and computer editing are transforming concert music as well.
Music publishing in its older form has virtually disappeared. Every composer
today is expected to produce scores at home; all you need is a computer and a
printer. And performers routinely ask composers to provide computer playback
along with a score; conductors no longer even pretend to be able to imagine a
score silently.

The next step is for the computer playback to begin to replace some or all
aspects of live performance. As in film music, this development is spurred by
economics and esthetics. Recent scores like Mr. Adams's "Gnarly Buttons" depend
on a synthesizer to give the music a sound that younger listeners will
recognize as contemporary. Perhaps concert music will have its share of hummers
before long, if they're not out there already.

Still, there remain fundamental differences in the functioning of concert and
film genres, which cause problems when composers try to cross over. The central
difference is one of speed. Concert music has to fill a lot of time, but most
film music cues are brief. This difference became important only with the
advent of talkies. Silent movies required continuous music to cover the sound
of the projector and create continuity in a flickering medium. Concert
composers had room to stretch without skirting around dialogue, so they did not
have to change their musical habits.

Copland's first film, "The City," was a documentary, with a voice-over but no
on- screen speech, and most of the music he used for the Suite From "The Red
Pony" comes from nondramatic parts of the film. Because "Crouching Tiger,
Hidden Dragon" uses subtitles rather than dubbed dialogue, it works like a
silent movie with broad swaths of music; a lot of it feels like a Yo-Yo Ma
video.

With the talkies, film music became more fragmentary and film composing more
specialized. In Mr. Raksin's "Bad and the Beautiful" score, for instance, most
cues after the sustained opening are less than a minute long. This imposed
brevity made film music seem irreconcilable with the concert hall. Concert
composers keep their music going by a strategy of postponement, setting up
expectations and delaying their fulfillment, but a film composer has to deliver
the goods quickly.

A memorable example of instantaneous evocation comes in Copland's score for
"The Heiress." The heroine waits for a lover who will never arrive. When
preview audiences laughed at Olivia de Haviland's predicament, Copland added a
sudden gust of whirling woodwind music, which perfectly captured her state of
nervous expectancy. The music feels like a muscle spasm. (Did someone ask
Copland to whistle a muscle spasm?) The film creates suspense by keeping us
waiting to see if the caddish Montgomery Clift will ever show up; the music
makes the woman's agony real, and in a matter or seconds.

HERRMANN said he did not have time for an eight-bar tune; he built his film
scores from two- second motifs that could do their job no matter how brief a
musical cue might be. But for concertgoers used to waiting 20 minutes for
Beethoven to answer his own musical question, a succession of cues does not add
up to a symphonic experience, especially when they are detached from the images
they serve to amplify.

The concert hall automatically gives its own composers an edge. Some, when they
cross over, conceive the concert version of their music simultaneously with the
film score, as Copland did with "The Red Pony" and Mr. Corigliano did with "The
Red Violin." Herrmann's "Psycho" Suite is a more complicated example, for the
film score made use of a previously composed symphonic composition, but most
listeners are just waiting for the shower scene anyway.

Blame postmodernism or technology, but our expectations of symphonic structure
have diminished; we live in an age of short attention spans and sound bites,
after all, and delayed gratification is so 19th century. We also live in an eye
rather than an ear culture. Many orchestras are talking about using some kind
of video even for their classical concerts: the MTV-ization of the concert
hall. When that happens, and it won't be long, everything really will be film
music.

David Schiff is a composer on the faculty of Reed College in Portland, Ore.

Ed Auxer, the smiling WLIP Disc jockey who worked as co-host of the January 24th, 1959 Winter Dance Party alongside ABC-TV's Jim Lounsbury, died in Milwaukee on August 21 of 2004, according to the Rootsweb.com database. His tenure is unknown as unfortunately no records survive of his career at WLIP, but his Social Security application originated in Pennsylvania. His birthplace is likewise a mystery, but his birthday is December 19th, 1909. He would have just turned 49 the month before the event.

Nine days before the music died amidst the twisted wreckage of a Beechcraft Bonanza in a frozen Iowa cornfield, it was very much alive in the downtown Kenosha Eagles Club ballroom.

Fifty years ago on the evening of Jan. 24 — it fell on a Saturday in 1959, just as it will this year — Kenosha photographer Tony Szikil was impatiently glancing at his watch. He had been booked for a wedding at what was then known as the Eagles Ballroom on 58th Street, but the current of what would endure as timeless music was fiercely tugging at him.

One floor above where the then 24-year-old Szikil was wrapping up his wedding assignment — or so he thought he was — Buddy Holly was strumming his Fender Stratocaster guitar to an audience of 1,500 energized kids. Distinguished by his large black-framed glasses, red polka-dot ascot and hiccuping, drawling singing voice, the 22-year-old Texan had indelibly carved his name among the pioneers of rock `n' roll with timeless classics the likes of "That'll Be The Day," "Peggy Sue" and "Oh, Boy!"

In terms of popularity, he was second only to Elvis Presley. But unlike Presley, Holly wrote most of his songs — songs that would one day be covered by the Beatles and Rolling Stones, among countless others.

What was billed as "The Winter Dance Party" had kicked off in Milwaukee the previous night, but there was little glamour on this tour. Joined by musicians that included 17-year-old sensation Ritchie Valens, J.P. Richardson (better known as "The Big Bopper"), Waylon Jennings and Dion DiMucci and the Belmonts, Holly would be putting himself through a grueling series of dates in the Midwest during the depths of a cold winter.

Their tour bus was a frozen relic that frequently broke down during all-night treks through dark country roads. And the tour itself was a logistical nightmare with performances scheduled haphazardly throughout the Midwest for several weeks with no off days. So miserable were the traveling conditions that drummer Carl Bunch had to be hospitalized with severely frost-bitten feet.

There was no sign of the strain that would set in as Holly triumphantly was wrapping up his set that night in Kenosha. Szikil, who worked for Sterelczyk Photo in Kenosha, lobbied for this assignment among four other weddings that day with the hope of seeing these young stars perform.

It would prove to be a struggle.

"It was the worst wedding I had for that year," said Szikil, a life-long Kenosha resident. "I was in the mezzanine right below the ballroom and, at 9 o'clock, I went to the bride and groom and said, `Can I go upstairs for 15 minutes? I want to take some pictures.' And they said, `No, your contract calls for 10:30.'

"So I waited around until 10 and I went back and said, `I'll give you two free 8x10's for your book if you let me go upstairs for 15 minutes.' And they said, `No your contract calls for 10:30.'

"At 25 after 10, I took the bride and groom for one last shot and I kept checking the time. And then they said, `One more picture' and I said, `No!' and I walked away because it was 10:30. They pushed me to 10:30 and it was past 10:30."

Just as Szikil entered the mobbed ballroom, Holly was wrapping up his set with what Szikil believes was "Peggy Sue." Aiming the Speed Graphic camera he still owns above the crowd, Szikil took a far-away shot that turned out to be the only image he would get that night of Holly performing (he later had it enlarged to an extent that Holly is far more
recognizable).

By this point, the four other photographers from Sterelczyk Photo who had been shooting weddings that day joined Szikil. All five men were wearing matching clothes from their studio, which proved to be vital that night as they tried to get close to the stage.

"The people in front of us thought we were a group and parted," Szikil said. "We walked all the way up to the stage. And then Jim Lounsberry, a WGN DJ, said, `Hey you with the camera, come on stage.' That's when Ritchie came on the stage. That's why most of my shots are of Ritchie.

"After the show, Jim Lounsberry introduced me to Buddy, Ritchie and The Big Bopper."

Szikil remembers Holly as having a firm Texan handshake, Valens as having a soft teenager's grip and the flamboyant Big Bopper welcoming him with a rowdy "give-me-some-skin" persona.

WLIP DJ Ed Auxer is seen in the middle of the musicians alongside Lounsberry, grinning the widest.

Nine days later, those three young stars, so full of life and promise that night in Kenosha, were killed just after 1 a.m. Feb. 3 when their light plane crashed five minutes after takeoff following a show in Clear Lake, Iowa. Holly, weary of the endless all-night bus rides, chartered the plane for $108 so he could get to Fargo, N.D., early and get some laundry done for the next show.

"I found out about 12 or 1 o'clock that day," Szikil said. "My wife told me. She said, `Did you hear on the radio what happened?' I felt hurt. I just sat home, watched TV and did nothing. And I reminisced.

"I still think about what I could have done that day and how much I appreciated being there."

I had the indisputable privilage and honor to meet and converse with
Louie on several occasions.  A good friend of mine, Joe Pulice is (a
veteran drummer) and good friend of Louie's.  Although I had met Louie
at Percussion Clinics and conventions, I was most honored to see him
again with Joe two and a half years ago at a special concert in honor
of Louie put on by the Drummer's Instructor's Guild, of which I was a
member.  It was a great show and tribute to Louie coupled with the
additional pleasure of introducing Aaron and Ryan to Louie with a few
pictures!  He was one of the greatest drummers AND the greatest
individuals I have ever met and will be sorely missed.    Shane Mooney