11-27b: Lee Morgan Delightfulee 1966 - Weill / Brecht Three Penny Opera (in English) : Lotte Lenya 1954 - Dufay Music For St Anthony Of Padua / Binchois Consort 1996 - Honegger : Jeanne d'Arc au Bucher / Zorina | Ormandy 1952

1474 – Guillaume Dufay (Flemish composer)
1749 – Balthasar Schmid (German composer & music publisher, friend of J.S. Bach)
1749 – Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel (German composer)
1890 – Emanuele Muzio (Italian conductor & composer, friend & assistant to Verdi)
1899 – Felipe Gutiérrez y Espinosa (Puerto Rican composer)
1915 – Sigismund Zaremba [Сигизмунд Заремба] (Ukrainian composer & conductor of Polish ancestry)
1916 – James Cutler Dunn Parker (American composer, organist & pianist)
1932 – Evelyn Preer (American actress & blues singer)
1955 – Luís de Freitas Branco (Portuguese composer & teacher)
1955 – Arthur Honegger (French-born Swiss composer & violinist)
1958 – Artur Rodziński (Polish-born American conductor)
1965 – Carl Parrish (American musicologist & author)
1967 – Héctor [Ettore] Panizza (Argentine conductor & composer)
1968 – Hans Redlich (Austrian composer, conductor, musicologist & author)
1968 – Gino Roncaglia (Italian musicologist & author)
1973 – Frank Christian (American jazz trumpeter)
1981 – Lotte Lenya (Austrian singer, monologist & actress, spouse of Kurt Weill)
1982 – Filip Kutev [Филип Кутев] (Bulgarian composer & choirmaster, Bulgarian State Television Female Vocal Choir)
1988 – Karel Horký (Czech composer & bassoonist)
1994 – Fernando Lopes-Graça (Portuguese composer & musicologist)
1998 – Barbara Acklin (American soul singer & songwriter)
2005 – Joe Jones (American R&B singer, songwriter & arranger)
2006 – Don Butterfield (American jazz & classical tuba player)
2006 – Alan Freeman (English disc jockey)

Sorry... been busy. I hope this will make it up to you. One of hard-bop trumpet great Lee Morgan's very best albums, one of the best recordings available of the beautiful sacred music of early Renaissance master Guillaume Dufay, a landmark recording of Arthur Honneger's scintillating masterpiece Joan of Arc at the Stake...

... and Lotte Lenya (who's remembered best by most people for her portrayal of the sadistic Rosa Klebb in the James Bond film From Russia With Love) reprising the role of Jenny, which she'd created in 1928 for her husband Kurt Weill's Dreigroschenoper. This Broadway cast recording from 1954 is of Marc Blitzstein's adaptation in English, and the cast also includes a young Bea Arthur - surely that's got to sweeten the deal for you!

Another thing thing I should mention, just in case it causes confusion. The drummer in the big band on the Lee Morgan date is Philly Joe Jones - not the Joe Jones who's on our list, who was a singer! Those Joe Joneses have always got to be causing trouble this way, don't they? Anyway, it's all for the sake of tuba genius Don Butterfield, who also plays in that big band. Of course, all of them... Lee, both Joe Joneses, Don... have long since pooped. So I guess it's all the same...

09-30: Bob Dylan Desire 1976 - Aaron-Carl Crucified XDB Remixes | LWB Podcast 48 - Francesco Durante Lamentations - Virgil Thomson 3 Pictures | 5 Blake Songs Ormandy - Les Paul & Mary Ford 16 Most Requested

1612 – Ercole Bottrigari (Italian scholar, mathematician, poet, music theorist, architect & composer)
1712 – Johann Michael Zacher (Austrian church & court composer & music director)
1716 – Heinrich Georg Neuss (German theologian & composer)
1755 – Francesco Durante (Italian composer)
1803 – Charles Broche (French organist & composer)
1819 – Nicolas Rozé (French music librarian, music theorist, music director & composer)
1884 – Louis Lacombe (French pianist & composer)
1904 – Sigurd Lie (Norwegian composer & pianist)
1940 – Walter Kollo (German theatrical & song composer, conductor & music publisher)
1963 – Arnold Foster (English conductor, choir director, composer, arranger & teacher)
1976 – Louis Fourestier (French conductor, composer & teacher, winner Prix de Rome 1925)
1977 – Mary Ford (American pop singer & guitarist, wife & performing partner of Les Paul)
1983 – Freddy Martin (American jazz tenor saxophonist & bandleader)
1989 – Virgil Thomson (American composer & music critic)
1991 – Toma Zdravković [Тома Здравковић] (Serbian folk singer & poet)
2004 – Jacques Levy (American songwriter, theatrical director & clinical psychologist)
2010 – Aaron-Carl [Ragland] (American electronic dance musician)

Well, you know what they say. "When it rains, it pours." Do you know what that saying means, all of you out there for whom English is a second language? Well, I'll tell you. It means that our product tends to clump together when it's very humid outside, so we add an absorbent anti-caking agent to it, such as magnesium carbonate, in order to ensure that it is free-flowing during such weather conditions. Pretty interesting, huh? Aren't you glad you've got me around to teach you about the idiomatic use of the English language?

Well, I'm sitting here trying to decide whether there's anything much I want to say about today's poopers. You know, I really don't think so. I think everything you'd really want to know is either in the links above, or in your "supplemental" reading below. Enjoy!!  :>

09-22: Mahler 5 Abravanel 1974 - Schleiermacher Music at the Bauhaus 1999 - Brahms Stern Rose Ormandy 1964 - Eddie Fisher Sings Irving Berlin 1954

1905 – Célestine Galli-Marié (French operatic mezzo-soprano, creator of title role in Carmen)
1927 – Giannotto Bastianelli (Italian musicologist & author)
1935 – Karl Schröder II (German cellist, composer & conductor)
1959 – Josef Matthias Hauer (Austrian composer & music theorist)
1975 – Franz Salmhofer (Austrian composer, clarinetist, conductor & poet)
1981 – Harry Warren [Salvatore Antonio Guaragna] (American composer & lyricist of stage & screen)
1987 – Louis Kentner (Hungarian-born British pianist & composer)
1989 – Irving Berlin [Israel Isidore Baline] (Russian-born American composer & lyricist of stage & screen)
1993 – Maurice Abravanel (Greek-born Swiss-American conductor & pianist of Sephardic ancestry)
1994 – Teddy Buckner (American jazz trumpeter)
1994 – Leonard Feather (British-born American jazz music critic, pianist, composer & producer)
1994 – Mattie Moss Clark (American gospel choir director & mother of The Clark Sisters)
1995 – Dolly Collins (English folk keyboardist, arranger & composer, sister of Shirley)
2001 – Isaac Stern [Исаак Стерн] (Ukrainian-born American violinist)
2010 – Eddie Fisher (American pop singer & actor)

Ugh. These lists are going to have to be pared down brutally if I ever hope to get caught up. But do you like the color scheme I used today? I went with off-blah.

Yesterday we had two great electric bassists, one who outshone the other. Today it's the same deal, except with Tin Pan Alley songwriters: the great Harry Warren (42nd Street, etc.), being overshadowed by Irving Berlin, who was probably the greatest of them all.

We also have the creator of the title role in Bizet's Carmen, Célestine Galli-Marié, who was a high mezzo-soprano. For many years, such a mezzo was referred to as a "Galli-Marié."

There's also Josef Matthias Hauer, who came up with a system of composing with 12 tones just a year or two before Arnold Schoenberg did, although Hauer's methods were quite different. Central to the Hauer approach was the classification of any 12-tone succession into one of 44 tropes, or pairs of complementary unordered hexachords. You don't get it? That's okay, you don't have to understand everything. If you did, you'd be God, and just think how boring that would be. Seriously, doesn't God get bored, knowing there's nothing for Him to discover, nothing that will ever be mysterious to Him? Don't ponder that question. You'd be better off to stick with learning more about Hauer's tropes.

If you've got more than half a dozen jazz albums in your collection, at least one of them probably has liner notes written by Leonard Feather. Also along jazz lines, there's trumpeter Teddy Buckner, an old-time Dixielander, who not only sounded but also looked very much like Louis Armstrong.

Eddie Fisher passed away just last year. Most of you out there would probably know him better as Princess Leia's dad than for his singing.

Mattie Moss Clark was a pioneering figure in the world of gospel choir singing. The standard disposition of three-part harmony for such choirs was of her devising.

And from the world of classical performance, there's Maurice Abravanel, music director of the Utah Symphony between the late 40s & late 70s. He was another Mahlerian, and so we get another chance to remember Gustav Mahler during this, his death centenary. We'll have several more chances before the year is up, so don't worry that we've only addressed Mahler's 5th & 8th symphonies and Das Lied von der Erde so far.

And Issac Stern, one of the great violinists of the past century. My old violin teacher from high school was not fond of his sound. Her comment on him was "Crunch! Crunch! Crunch!" Yeah, he did crunch a bit with the bow. It was an assertive sound - not for everybody, I guess. I attended a master class Stern gave in the early 90s. He asked those assembled to raise their hands if they played the violin. Then he did the same for the cello. And the piano. And that was it. As a violist, I felt a bit left out. On the other hand, I was spared the embarrassment of anybody knowing I played the viola...

08-15: Marin Marais Gamba - Brahms Szigeti Ormandy Schnabel Szell - Big Bill Broonzy One Beer One Blues - Dusty Springfield in Memphis

Ordered chronologically. Trouble identifying them? Click here for a tagged image.

1576 – Bálint Bakfark (Hungarian composer & lutenist)
1728 – Marin Marais (French composer & gambist)
1798 – Felice Alessandri (Italian composer & harpsichordist)
1848 – Timothy Olmstead (American composer, psalmodist & Revolutionary War fifer)
1853 – Giovanni Battista Polledro (Italian violinist & composer)
1907 – Joseph Joachim (Austro-Hungarian violinist, conductor & composer)
1918 – Peter Gast (German writer & composer, friend & colleague of Nietzsche)
1935 – Gerard von Brucken Fock (Dutch composer & painter)
1936 – Stanisław Niewiadomski (Polish composer, conductor & music critic)
1951 – Artur Schnabel (Austrian pianist & composer)
1958 – Big Bill Broonzy (American blues singer, songwriter & guitarist)
1968 – Edward Kilenyi, Sr. (Hungarian-born American film composer & violinist, teacher of Gershwin)
1972 – Alf Thorbald Hurum (Norwegian composer)
1978 – Harrison Kerr (American composer & music editor, co-founder of American Music Center)
1985 – Richard Yardumian (American composer)
1995 – Erbie Bowser (American blues pianist)
1995 – Jesse "Babyface" Thomas (American blues guitarist & singer)
2003 – Gösta Sundqvist (Finnish rock singer, songwriter & guitarist & radio personality)
2004 – Semiha Berksoy (Turkish soprano & painter, early Turkish opera singer)
2007 – Richard Bradshaw (English opera conductor, active in Canada)
2008 – Jerry Wexler (American studio producer & journalist, coined term "rhythm and blues")

Gerard von Brucken Fock and Bálint Bakfark. Gerard von Brucken Fock and Bálint Bakfark. I have nothing to say about these guys, I just think saying their names is fun.

Well, it was a blue day (not a Blue Monday, though - it was a Tuesday) in Texas on August 15th, 1995 when Dallas guitarist Jesse "Babyface" Thomas and Austin pianist Erbie Bowser passed away within hours of one another. Hm, maybe I got that wrong. They were bluesmen, right? So if they died, maybe Texas got less blue that day. The complementary color of blue is orange. Maybe that day was really an orange day in Texas. That's it. It was an Orange Tuesday in Texas. Hook 'em Horns, or whatever. However, August 15th is really a lot more orange than that, because Babyface & Erbie in fact passed away on the 37th anniversary of the day one of the true all-time legends of blues pooped. That was Big Bill Broonzy. But that didn't happen on a Tuesday. August 15th fell on a Friday in 1958, so I guess that day was an Orange Friday in Chicago. I think Babyface & Ernie would both have been pleased to know they went to the Lord on the same day Big Bill did. Unfortunately, they didn't live to see it. More about Big Bill after the jump across the open grave...