[Dixielandjazz] Dixielandjazz Digest, Vol 121, Issue 12 - The Jazz Singer
Mike Sarkisian
mikesarkisian at aon.at
Sat Jan 12 13:25:38 PST 2013
I have never seen any evidence that Al Jolson ever played the starring role
in the Broadway production of "The Jazz Singer!" That role was exclusive to
George Jessel, who peformed in the role for about 3 years, until the film
version cut attendance to near nothing. I would add that the play was just
that, a play and not nearly the musical the film version was.
Mike Sarkisian
-----Original Message-----
From: dixielandjazz-request at ml.islandnet.com
Sent: Saturday, January 12, 2013 9:00 PM
To: mikesarkisian at aon.at
Subject: Dixielandjazz Digest, Vol 121, Issue 12
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Today's Topics:
1. Tour Start idea - Stan Kenton Alumni Band (vaxtrpts at aol.com)
2. Re: Clarinet duet (Marek Boym)
3. Happy Birthday Jan 11 (Robert Ringwald)
4. "The Jazz Singer" reviewed (Robert Ringwald)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2013 15:16:28 -0500 (EST)
From: vaxtrpts at aol.com
To: dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com
Cc: Dixieland Jazz Mailing List <dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com>
Subject: [Dixielandjazz] Tour Start idea - Stan Kenton Alumni Band
Message-ID: <8CFBE4FAC3431CC-D74-C0B3 at webmail-d190.sysops.aol.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
I know this isn't really "dixieland," but it certainly is working to keep
more "traditonal" forms of jazz music alive. (Big Band..........) Friends
of Big Band Jazz has donated over $60,000 to music education and to help
musicians in need.
http://www.bigbandjazz.net/TOUR_START_PAGE.html
Many ofyou know about fundraising entities on the internet to help the arts.
The main one has you put a monetary goal assomething to reach and if you
don?t reach that level, you get nothing. Well, we have decided with Friends
of BigBand Jazz to instigate our own ?TOUR START FUND.? There is no limit
or ?target? amount. Just whatever we can raise to help our cause.
As manyof you know, we tour at least one time a year with the Stan Kenton
Alumni Bandand 95% of all our engagements are in high schools and colleges,
in keepingwith Stan?s commitment to jazz education. In these hard economic
times, schools just can?t afford to bring in abig band such as ours, but
they would LOVE to have us in to work with theirstudents. Any school that
books the bandfor an evening concert gets a FREE afternoon clinic from the
whole band. We also have their school band open for us atthe concert.
So, weare asking for your support to make our 2013 tour the most
successfulever. Our tour dates are April 8 ? 23and we do already have our
anchor dates in place and we are working hard tofill in the rest of the
dates. With yourhelp, we can make the band even more available financially
for these schools.
Also, wewill be recording again on this tour. Wewill be glad to send a CD
to any of you who donate at least $30. We will, of course accept any
donation nomatter how small. We would love to havesome larger donations as
well. Everydollar will help us toward our goal of bringing Stan Kenton?s
music andcreativity and dedication to education, to young people. Anyone
donating at least $100 will have theirname in our tour program as a Tour
Supporter.
We hopeto create new audiences for big band music in addition to
entertaining peoplewho are already big band fans.
Donations are tax-deductible, aswe are a 501c3 Nonprofit Corporation.
You can donate with your credit card at:
http://www.bigbandjazz.net/TOUR_START_PAGE.html
http://www.bigbandjazz.net/TOUR_START_PAGE.html
Many ofyou know about fundraising entities on the internet to help the arts.
The main one has you put a monetary goal assomething to reach and if you
don?t reach that level, you get nothing. Well, we have decided with Friends
of BigBand Jazz to instigate our own ?TOUR START FUND.? There is no limit
or ?target? amount. Just whatever we can raise to help our cause.
As manyof you know, we tour at least one time a year with the Stan Kenton
Alumni Bandand 95% of all our engagements are in high schools and colleges,
in keepingwith Stan?s commitment to jazz education. In these hard economic
times, schools just can?t afford to bring in abig band such as ours, but
they would LOVE to have us in to work with theirstudents. Any school that
books the bandfor an evening concert gets a FREE afternoon clinic from the
whole band. We also have their school band open for us atthe concert.
So, weare asking for your support to make our 2013 tour the most
successfulever. Our tour dates are April 8 ? 23and we do already have our
anchor dates in place and we are working hard tofill in the rest of the
dates. With yourhelp, we can make the band even more available financially
for these schools.
Also, wewill be recording again on this tour. Wewill be glad to send a CD
to any of you who donate at least $30. We will, of course accept any
donation nomatter how small. We would love to havesome larger donations as
well. Everydollar will help us toward our goal of bringing Stan Kenton?s
music andcreativity and dedication to education, to young people. Anyone
donating at least $100 will have theirname in our tour program as a Tour
Supporter.
We hopeto create new audiences for big band music in addition to
entertaining peoplewho are already big band fans.
Donations are tax-deductible, aswe are a 501c3 Nonprofit Corporation.
You can donate with your credit card at:
http://www.bigbandjazz.net/TOUR_START_PAGE.html
------------------------------
Message: 2
Date: Sat, 12 Jan 2013 01:27:14 +0200
From: Marek Boym <marekboym at gmail.com>
To: Ken Gates <kwg915 at gmail.com>
Cc: Dixieland Jazz Mailing List <dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com>
Subject: Re: [Dixielandjazz] Clarinet duet
Message-ID:
<CABGvO8BoOJOV8bsnwEohFrwC8Yfn+WENHP3HLtv4f+C3WNMUyQ at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
Mine too, Ken, Mine too.
It's not the first time someone sends the link, but it's wonderful
ever time. And so different from the usually played versions!
I have always liked Acker, ever since first hearing him in Wroc?aw
(pron. Wrotswav), Poland, in 1954 or 1955.
Cheers
On 11 January 2013 04:23, Ken Gates <kwg915 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Just ran across this. George Lewis and Acker Bilk
> playing a duet. My cup of tea.
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elp6U2gmjJk
>
> Have a listen.
>
> Ken Gates
>
> _______________________________________________
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>
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>
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------------------------------
Message: 3
Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2013 22:47:29 -0500
From: "Robert Ringwald" <rsr at ringwald.com>
To: "DJML" <dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com>
Cc: Dixieland Jazz Mailing List <dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com>
Subject: [Dixielandjazz] Happy Birthday Jan 11
Message-ID: <498CC80B73424C8584461E48491073ED at BobPC>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
1900: Wilbur DeParis
-Bob Ringwald
www.ringwald.com
Amateur (ham) Radio Operator K6YBV
Aboard the Holland America Maasdam, Caribbean
JazzSea Cruise
I think Congressmen should wear uniforms, you know,
like NASCAR drivers, so we could identify their corporate sponsors.
------------------------------
Message: 4
Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2013 22:52:01 -0500
From: "Robert Ringwald" <rsr at ringwald.com>
To: "DJML" <dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com>
Cc: Dixieland Jazz Mailing List <dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com>
Subject: [Dixielandjazz] "The Jazz Singer" reviewed
Message-ID: <428C7B3916C44303A678990481F66463 at BobPC>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
DVD Extra: Vitaphoning It In
by Lou Lumenick
New York Post blog, January 8, 2013
Warner Home Video has launched its extensive salute to the studio's 90th
anniversary
with a Blu-ray upgrade for "The Jazz Singer" (1927). The four Warner
Brothers --
Harry, Albert, Sam and Jack -- had entered the movie business as exhibitors
in 1905,
started making their own films in 1918, opened their first Hollywood studio
and incorporated
Warner Bros in 1923 (the "official" start date). By 1925, Warner Bros.
employing
major talents like John Barrymore and Ernst Lubitsch. But Warner Bros.
history as
a major studio really begins two years later with "The Jazz Singer," the
first feature
film to feature talking sequences, a technology that had been used in
various forms
for shorts for two decades but never really captured the public's
imagination.
Except for one 1926 Vitaphone short -- included in the bountiful bonus
materials
-- none of them had Al Jolson, a legendary stage performer who electrified
audiences
with his singing and ad-libbed dialogue (which, contrary to legend, was
agreed to
in his contract rather than spur-of-the-moment decision).
It's Jolson's outsized personality that makes "The Jazz Singer" -- a creaky
melodrama
about the son of a cantor (Warner Oland before his run as Charlie Chan) who
becomes
a Broadway star derived from a Samson Raphaelson play inspired partly by
Jolson's
own life and which Jolson starred in on stage -- more than strictly a
historical
curiosity. (Like many of Jolson's films, it's rarely shown because he
performs a
scene in blackface.) Film historian Ron Hutchinson of the Vitaphone Project,
on the
excellent commentary track with bandleader Vince Giordano, speculates that
Vitaphone
may well not have caught on so quickly if the film had instead starred
original choice
George Jessel (who refused to sign unless he was paid extra for his voice).
Lubitsch had been penciled in to direct "The Jazz Singer," but left for a
lucrative
deal at Paramount before it went before the cameras. The task fell to Alan
Crosland,
who the year before had helmed the first Vitaphone feature, "Don Juan,"
which had
a soundtrack with music and sound effects, but a frustratingly mute
Barrymore in
the lead, as well as a couple of similar sound-enhanced features.
An an excellent feature-length documentary -- like all of the extras, ported
over
from WHV's superb three-disc 80th anniversary DVD edition from 2007 and not
in high
definition -- explains, Vitaphone was a subsidiary jointly owned by Warner
Bros.
and AT&T's Western Electric division that was formed to exploit Western
Electric's
system of recording and reproducing motion picture sound on discs. This
cumbersome
system would quickly be supplanted by the sound-on-film system that was the
norm
until the current digital revolution, but not before Vitaphone's superior
sound reproduction
would propel Warners into Hollywood's front ranks.
Audiophiles will most appreciate the crystal clarity, and spectacular
dynamic rage,
of the musical soundtrack that represents the major advance for the Blu-ray
of "The
Jazz Singer" -- the restored but still fairly soft film elements don't
hugely benefit
from the extra definition. Also carried over from the 2007 DVD are more than
four
hours of Vitaphone shorts, mostly records of vaudeville acts (some with
famous performers,
some truly obscure) that provide a valuable record of stage performances
from the
early part of the century. This time around, the discs are packaged in a
77-page
Digibook with archival materials that further explains Vitaphone's
importance to
the studio's history.
Warners continued using the Vitaphone brand for shorts into the 1950s, two
decades
after the studio switched to sound on film. The Warner Archive Collection,
which
has already released a couple of collections of Vitaphone shorts --
including many
early ones that utilize long-lost sound discs rounded up by the Vitaphone
Project
-- recently put out three more. "Vitaphone Varieties: Volume Two" includes
35 of
these rare shorts from 1926 to 1931, some featuring the sound debuts of such
future
stars as Edgar Bergen, Bert Lahr, Fred Allen and Joe E. Brown.
Full column:
http://www.nypost.com/p/blogs/movies/dvd_extra_vitaphoning_it_in_PZhL7rFwOawNCB4yzPZ9TK#axzz2HOZvAGse
-30-
-Bob Ringwald
www.ringwald.com
Amateur (ham) Radio Operator K6YBV
Aboard the Holland America Maasdam, Caribbean
JazzSea Cruise
I think Congressmen should wear uniforms, you know,
like NASCAR drivers, so we could identify their corporate sponsors.
------------------------------
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