Pops

Michiko Kakutani reviews the new biography of Louis Armstrong — Pops. It’s a positive review of what appears to be a significant addition to the Armstrong literature from Terry Teachout. Kakutani leads with:

Louis Armstrong, a k a Satchmo, a k a Pops, was to music what Picasso was to painting, what Joyce was to fiction: an innovator who changed the face of his art form, a fecund and endlessly inventive pioneer whose discovery of his own voice helped remake 20th-century culture.

Reading the review reminded me of a quotation from Gary Giddins in his Visions of Jazz.

On November 12, 1925, in Chicago, Armstrong embarked on the most influential recording project in jazz, perhaps in American music. Over the next three years, he produced the sixty-five sides … generally known as the Hot Fives and Hot Sevens. If Armstrong had put music aside after the December 12, 1928, session, he would not have exerted the full measure of his charisma as a singer; would not have recorded the dozens of nonpareil big band performances; would not have enjoyed the pop hits and movies; would not have matured and mellowed over time into an even more expressive instrumentalist and singer; would not have achieved international renown; would not even have earned the nickname Satchmo. But he would still be the most imminent figure in jazz history.

“When I blow I think of times and things from outa the past that gives me an image of the tune. Like moving pictures passing in front of my eyes. A town, a chick somewhere back down the line, an old man with no name you seen once in a place you don’t remember.” Louis Armstrong

Best line of late night

“That evil guy, the evil masterminding terrorist Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, he is going on trial here in New York City. I will tell you something, this guy is nothing but evil. One time he called CNN and told him that his son was floating away in a balloon.”

David Letterman

Proof That You Hate Christmas Creep

When do you think it is appropriate for stores to start decorating for
and promoting the winter holidays?

Before Labor Day 1%
Between Labor Day and Halloween 5%
Between Halloween and Thanksgiving 36%
After Thanksgiving 54%
Never 1%
Don’t Celebrate Holidays 1%
Don’t Know 1%
Refused to Answer 1%

Source: Consumer Reports National Research Center

The Consumerist

Before Labor Day? Those are the people that leave their Christmas lights hanging all year.

The Decade's 50 Most Important Recordings

It seemed like an impossible task, but that didn’t stop us from trying. With the first decade of the new millennium coming to a close, we decided to compile a list of the 50 most important recordings of the past 10 years — a list that covers a wide range of styles and genres, with indelible songs and albums that challenge, inspire and captivate. These are the game-changers: records that signaled some sort of shift in the way music is made or sounds, or ones that were especially influential or historically significant.

The Decade’s 50 Most Important Recordings : NPR

Here’s the full alphabetical list, but click the link above for a discussion of each of the 50.

John Adams: On The Transmigration Of Souls
Animal Collective: Merriweather Post Pavilion
Arcade Fire: Funeral
The Bad Plus: These Are The Vistas
Beyonce: Dangerously In Love
Bon Iver: For Emma, Forever Ago
Bright Eyes: I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning
Burial: Untrue
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah: S/T
Kelly Clarkson: Breakaway
Coldplay: A Rush Of Blood To The Head
Danger Mouse: The Grey Album
Death Cab For Cutie: Transatlanticism
The Decemberists: The Crane Wife
Eminem: The Marshall Mathers LP
The Flaming Lips: Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots
Osvaldo Golijov: La Pasion Segun San Marcos (Saint Mark’s Passion)
Green Day: American Idiot
Iron And Wine: Our Endless Numbered Days
Jay-Z: The Blueprint
Norah Jones: Come Away With Me
Juanes: Fijate Bien
LCD Soundsystem: Sound Of Silver
Lil’ Wayne: Tha Carter III
Little Brother: The Listening
Yo-Yo Ma: Silk Road Journeys: When Strangers Meet
Mastodon: Leviathan
M.I.A.: Kala
Jason Moran: Black Stars
OutKast: Stankonia
Brad Paisley: 5th Gear
Panda Bear: Person Pitch
Robert Plant & Alison Krauss: Raising Sand
The Postal Service: Give Up
Radiohead: In Rainbows
Radiohead: Kid A
Shakira: Fijacion Oral, Vol. 1
Sigur Ros: ( )
Britney Spears: In The Zone
Sufjan Stevens: Illinois
The Strokes: Is This It
The Swell Season: Once Soundtrack
Ali Farka Toure & Toumani Diabate: In The Heart of the Moon
TV On The Radio: Return To Cookie Mountain
Various: Garden State Soundtrack
Various: O Brother, Where Art Thou? Soundtrack
Kanye West: The College Dropout
The White Stripes: White Blood Cells
Wilco: Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
Amy Winehouse: Back To Black

What I'm Reading

I’m currently reading Pulitzer-winning writer Steve Coll’s superb The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century.

This book was handed to me by a friend months ago; she was just bursting with enthusiasm about it. You must read this, fascinating, riveting, etc., etc. I took it as the polite thing to do. But after reading some of Coll’s recent commentary on Afghanistan in The New Yorker (where he writes and blogs, see below), I finally picked up the book over the weekend.

My friend was right. The book is fascinating; it is riveting. Coll tells the story of the poor Yemeni immigrant Muhammad Bin Laden, a man who built a construction company in Saudi Arabia out of nothing over a 35-year-period before dying in a plane crash in 1967. Along the way he also fathered (by official count) 54 children, among them Osama (son number 17, more or less.)

Osama was just 9 when his father died, the sole child from that marriage (his mother had four other children with her second husband — altogether Osama Bin Laden had 57 half-siblings). The Bin Laden family, under the domination of much older half-brother Salem, whose story is a major part of the book, grew richer and more tied to the west, as did Saudi Arabia. Osama turned to more radical Islam and violence, ultimately forcing a break with his family, repudiation and — in 1994 — the loss of his Saudi citizenship. The rest, as they say, is history.

Steve Coll won a journalism Pulitzer for his work on the SEC and a nonfiction Pulitzer for Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001. He makes his excellent observations and commentary about Afghanistan and Pakistan in the pages of The New Yorker and at the New Yorker blog Think Tank.

National Geographic's International Photography Contest 2009

National Geographic’s International Photography Contest attracts thousands of entries from photographers of all skill levels around the world every year. While this year’s entry deadline has passed, there is still time to view and vote for your favorites in the Viewer’s Choice competition. National Geographic was kind enough to let me choose a few of their entries from 2009 for display here on The Big Picture. Collected below are 25 images from the three categories of People, Places and Nature. Captions were written by the individual photographers. (25 photos total)

The Big Picture – Boston.com

Wow!

The political press follows; it doesn't lead

Matt Taibbi has a good Taibbi-esque treatment of the current media “conspiracy.” It includes:

Palin never had anything like that kind of attitude toward the press [accomodating], although in fairness the bullets were flying at her from the moment she entered the campaign. It doesn’t matter; the point is that she’s getting it from all angles now and that wouldn’t be happening if she still had any friends in high places.

The press corps that is bashing her skull in right now is the same one that hyped that WMD horseshit for like four solid years and pom-pommed America to war with Iraq over the screeching objections of the entire planet. It’s the same press corps that rolled out the red carpet for someone very nearly as abjectly stupid as Sarah Palin to win not one but two terms in the White House.

Harpers Ferry

The Shenandoah River, flowing north, empties into the Potomac at Harpers Ferry, West Virginia.

The passage of the Patowmac through the Blue Ridge is perhaps one of the most stupendous scenes in Nature. You stand on a very high point of land. On your right comes up the Shenandoah, having ranged along the foot of the mountain a hundred miles to seek a vent. On your left approaches the Patowmac in quest of a passage also. In the moment of their junction they rush together against the mountain, rend it asunder and pass off to the sea. The first glance of this scene hurries our senses into the opinion that this earth has been created in time, that the mountains were formed first, that the rivers began to flow afterwards, that in this place particularly they have been so dammed up by the Blue Ridge of mountains as to have formed an ocean which filled the whole valley; that, continuing to rise, they have at last broken over at this spot and have torn the mountain down from its summit to its base. The piles of rock on each hand, but particularly on the Shenandoah, the evident marks of their disruptions and avulsions from their beds by the most powerful agents in nature, corroborate the impression.

Thomas Jefferson, 1783

The confluence and the water power combined to make the location vital in early industrial America. The town was chartered in 1763 as Shenandoah Falls at Mr. Harper’s Ferry, named for its founder, Robert Harper. The United States Armory and Arsenal was established there in 1799; it produced more than 600,000 weapons by 1861. The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad reached the town in 1834; the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal the year before. By the time of John Brown’s Raid in 1859 there were around 3,000 people in the town and a number of mills and foundries.

Harpers Ferry, Viriginia, became Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, when the new state was carved from Confederate Virginia during the Civil War.

Click on any of the photos for an album of larger versions of all six.

Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. The hills in the background are in Maryland.
St. Peter’s Church, Harpers Ferry, first built in 1833.
Looking up the Shenandoah River from the Maryland side of the Potomac.
The Chesapeake and Ohio Canal (without water obviously) taken in Maryland from the RR bridge over the Potomac.
Looking down the Potomac. Taken from the RR bridge between Harper’s Ferry, WV, and Maryland. The hills in the distance are in Virginia.
It was November 1st and a gorgeous afternoon after a dreary, wet morning.

November 22nd

Today is the birthday

… of Napoleon Solo. Robert Vaughn is 77. Vaughn has a Ph.D. from USC in communications.

… of Billie Jean King. She’s 66.

… of Steve Van Zandt. Little Steven, E Street Band member and Sopranos actor, is 59.

… of Jamie Lee Curtis. She’s 51.

… of Mariel Hemingway. She’s 48.

… of Boris Becker. He’s 42.

… of Scarlett Johansson. She’s 25.

Abigail Adams, America’s second first lady and the mother of the sixth president, was born on this date in 1744.

Songwriter Hoagy Carmichael was born on this date in 1899: “Stardust,” “Georgia on My Mind,” “Up The Lazy River,” “Heart and Soul.”

Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve (Colorado)

… was re-disignated on this date in 2000, pending land acquisition. It had been a national monument since 1932.

The land was acquired and Great Sand Dunes became America’s 58th national park in 2004.

In this high mountain valley are the tallest dunes in North America, flanked by some of the highest peaks in the Rocky Mountains. The park and preserve protects much of the Great Sand Dunes’ natural system, including alpine tundra and lakes, forests, streams, dunes, grasslands, and wetlands.

Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve

National Parks Traveler tells us that Great Sand Dunes is one of the quietest places in the U.S.

Winner

Oldest Sweetie Mack ran a personal best 3K at the USATF National Junior Olympic Cross Country Championships for Region 3 in Spartanburg, South Carolina, yesterday, competing against boys born in 1999 and 2000 from Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia.

Mack didn’t place, but every time you set a new personal record you’re a winner.

A couple of nine-year-olds got the 2.1 miles done in about 11 minutes. Lots of over-achievers in this crowd.

(Mack and his Daddy got to visit the UNC and Duke campuses on their way home to Virginia, even attending a volley ball game in Cameron Indoor at Duke — and getting to touch the famous floor. I think Mack, who won’t be nine until next month, has already been on more college campuses than I have.)

Idle thoughts

Shades of Cliff Clavin at the bar the other night —

A male Cliff — “Sing something from the such-and-such album, or do we call them CDs.”

No Cliff, it was and still is album. An album is “a collection of recordings.” CD is a technology. A vinyl LP was just a technology.

Female Cliff in response to a comment to the room about the influenza epidemic — “It’s OK, he’s full of antibiotics.”

No Cliffette, antibiotics have no effect on viral infections.

November 21st is the birthday

… of baseball hall-of-famer Stan Musial. He’s 89. Stan “The Man” graced the first cover ever of “Sports Illustrated” (1954).

Sports Illustrated 24 All-Star Games… Three MVP Awards… 475 Homers… 331 Batting Average… 3,630 Hits… 1,949 Runs Scored… Three World Series Rings… 1,951 RBIs… 3,026 Games… Seven Batting Titles… A Plaque in Cooperstown…

Stan-The-Man.com

… of “That Girl” Marlo Thomas, now 72.

… of Malcolm John “Mac” Rebennack, Jr. That’s Dr. John, in the right place, wrong time. He’s 69 today.

… of actress Juliet Mills. Hayley’s older sister is 68. Juliet Mills first appeared in a movie in 1942, when she played an infant.

… basketball hall-of-famer Earl Monroe. The Pearl is 65.

… of writer-director-actor Harold Ramis. He’s 65. Ramis co-wrote the screenplay and directed “Groundhog Day,” enough to make me a fan. He was the doctor in the film.

… of Goldie Hawn. Kate Hudson’s mom is 64.

… of the other Judy Garland daughter, Lorna Luft. She’s 57.

… of the not so desperate Nicollette Sheridan. She’s 46.

… of Björk. She’s 44.

… of football hall-of-famer Troy Aikman. He’s 43.

… of probable future baseball hall-of-famer Ken Griffey Jr. Junior is 40.

Coleman Hawkins was born on this date in 1904.

Hawkins himself didn’t think there was anything outstanding about his Body and Soul saying “it was nothing special, just an encore I use in the clubs to get off the stand. I thought nothing of it and didn’t even bother to listen to it afterwards”. But the solo, two choruses of beautifully conceived and perfecly balanced improvisation, caused an immediate sensation with musicians and the public. It is still the standard to which tenorists aspire. A parallel can be drawn between Hawkins’ Body and Soul and Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. Both were brief, lucid, eloquent and timeless masterpieces, yet tossed off by their authors as mere ephemera.

Len Weinstock

Lincoln well knew what he had done at Gettysburg, but it’s a nice analogy even so.

A Letter to Mrs. Bixby

Executive Mansion,
Washington, Nov. 21, 1864

Dear Madam, –I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant General of Massachusetts, that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle.

I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering to you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save.

I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours, to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of Freedom. Yours, very sincerely and respectfully,

A. Lincoln.

[As it turns out, this letter, made even more famous when read in the film Saving Private Ryan, may have been written by John Hay, Lincoln’s secretary. Further, only two of Mrs. Bixby’s five sons had died in battle. One was honorably discharged, one was dishonorably discharged, and another deserted or died in a prison camp. Not that losing three sons in whatever way isn’t horrible enough.]

In My Beautiful Balloon

Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier and François Laurent, the marquis d’ Arlandes, flew in a untethered hot air balloon over Paris for 20 minutes on this date in 1783. The balloon was made of silk and paper and was constructed by Jacques Étienne and Joseph-Michel Montgolfier, who first took notice that smoke (i.e., hot air) would cause a bag to rise. The Montgolfiers experimented with paper bags before sending a balloon aloft with a sheep, a rooster and a duck (September 19, 1783). De Rozier went up in a tethered balloon on October 15.

But 226 years ago today, November 21, 1783, is — so far as we know — the date man first flew, untethered to the earth.

The winds have welcomed you with softness,
The sun has blessed you with his warm hands
You have flown so high and so free,
That God has joined you in laughter,
And set you gently again,
Into the loving arms of mother earth.

The Balloonists Prayer

Not exactly anything new line of the day

“[T]he traveling press covered Obama’s meetings with Asian officials as if this were a bunch of stops in a presidential campaign tour, and as a result missed or misrepresented what was going on.”

James Fallows paraphrasing journalism professor Howard French. Many critics familiar with China have leveled the same criticisms of the American coverage.

We've come a long way since 'Put a ring around the thing you think'

Test preparation has long been a big business catering to students taking SATs and admissions exams for law, medical and other graduate schools. But the new clientele is quite a bit younger: 3- and 4-year-olds whose parents hope that a little assistance — costing upward of $1,000 for several sessions — will help them win coveted spots in the city’s gifted and talented public kindergarten classes.

In Manhattan, Preparing for Kindergarten Admission Test – NYTimes.com

“‘It’s quite pricey, but compared to private school, which averages about $20,000 for kindergarten, the price is right,’ she said of the tutoring. ‘I just want the opportunity to have a choice.'”