THE SUMMIT

That's what they're calling a series of concerts going on right now featuring MANHATTAN TRANSFER and TAKE SIX. I got to see one tonight in Morristown NJ, which may have been the first in the series, and it was full of so many high points I couldn't begin to describe them.

It's enough to say that large numbers of folks (in a full house that I estimate contains over a thousand seats) were spontaneously jumping up for standing ovations after individual songs before the entire house stood up at the end, and others were just popping up explosively during high lights of performances mid-song.

I had to wipe tears from my face, not just my eyes, at a couple of numbers that were so spectacular I was that moved (like when two guys from TAKE SIX replaced the two guys from TRANSFER to sing with the two ladies "A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square" or when the two groups together sang "Like Someone in Love" with amazing harmonies and feeling)...

...to be still alive at my age and to see groups that have been around since the '70s (TRANSFER) and '80s (TAKE SIX) hit notes most twenty-year-olds can't, overwhelmed me with gratitude to just bear witness to such talent and stamina. You go boys and girls. Too late to stop now.

ONCE UPON A TIME

Me about to turn fifty on a good-hair/bad-eye-glass-frames day:

TATTOO HERITAGE

Check it out here.

DAVID LEHMAN'S SINATRA'S CENTURY

David Lehman's tribute to what would have been Sinatra's 100th birthday last year, is a genuine fan's offering. I was born into Sinatra's world at the beginning of World War Two when he was known as "The Voice" in his first period of mass adulation (by then teenage girls). And growing up not far from where he came from, seeing his ambition and talent transcend his origins, he was a beacon of not just ambition realized (by honing your talent and persevering), but of being true to the people and place you came from despite how far you went.

I was fortunate enough, in an interview years ago on NPR, to have interviewer Michael Silverblatt compare my poetry and life favorably to Sinatra's. Made not just my day but my decade. I didn't like some things about Sinatra, especially his late conversion to rightwing Republicanism (a la Reagan) a move made mostly in reaction to being snubbed by JFK who Sinatra arguably helped get elected. But I still loved the man's musical genius, Jersey authenticity and cool fashion sense.

Lehman's book consists of, as the subtitle says, "One Hundred Notes On The Man And His World." That includes concise but deep analyzes of Sinatra's vocal techniques and the seminal musical innovations he came up with that impacted popular music then and still. As well as biographical insights into his personality and persona.

All I can say is, if you are a fan of Sinatra's singing, like I am, you'll love this book. The hundred notes are mostly no more than a page or two, and in some instances only a paragraph, sometimes a very short one, like note number 52:

"After Sinatra died, I overheard someone say scornfully that he was overrated: 'Without his voice he would have been nothing.' There must be a rhetorical term for such a statement."

[PS: If SINATRA'S CENTURY whets your appetite for more, the second volume of James Kaplan's biography: SINATRA: The Chairman (the first was FRANK: The Voice) also came out last year and is twice or more as thick a tome as SINATRA'S CENTURY, with much more minute detail on the events in Sinatra's life, but not as insightful about Sinatra's talent and the ways he cultivated it and expressed it throughout the many phases of his life and career.]

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

BORN TO BE BLUE

Like good translations of poetry, sometimes the most literal version of someone's life doesn't convey the true meaning of it as well as a freer interpretation might. BORN TO BE BLUE, about a few significant years (mostly) in the life of jazz icon Chet Baker, doesn't get all the facts and details correctly, but it captures the poetic essence of Baker's mystique and reality in a totally artful way.

When I was a young "jazz musician" in the late 1950s and early 1960s, there was a rivalry between West Coast and East Coast jazz, much like the later rap coastal rivalry. Whether manufactured or not, as an East Coaster whose jazz icons were representative of the best the East Coast scene had to offer—Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane, Bill Evans et. al.—I murder-mouthed Chet Baker regularly, as just a pretty face with limited musical abilities.

It wasn't until I got older that I began to appreciate Baker's unique musical contribution, both as a trumpeter and singer. By then Baker was a wreck of his former self, having indulged his heroin habit beyond what might seem possible, yet he could still on occasion pull off a compelling performance, both live and recorded.

Despite the liberties taken by the Canadian writer/director Robert Budreu (Baker's heirs sued him for it), like Baker himself, BORN TO BE BLUE transcends its limitations to create not just an engaging and heartfelt film, but an insightful glimpse into the contradictions of creativity. The movie doesn't show Baker at his worst (he's presented more as victim than protagonist, i.e. no scenes of his well reported physical abuse of wives and lovers), but it does give an authentic picture of heroin addiction (according to friends who have gone through similar experiences) and it captures the sometimes unexpected moments of awe-inspiring creativity that can occur despite shortcomings and limitations.

And Ethan Hawke is mostly the reason why. The script is so contrived at times that it seems almost ludicrous for anyone who knows Baker's story, and yet it expertly distills the essence of that story into an almost perfect film, with Hawke making it all believable. When I heard his version of Baker's singing on an NPR show before I saw the film, I thought: That sounds like Ethan Hawke doing a bad imitation of Chet Baker. But when I saw Hawke singing in BORN TO BE BLUE, I was totally captured by the scenes, accepting completely that this was the real artist being represented and not an actor (who I had actually worked with, on WHITE FANG, the first movie Hawke was the main lead in—and on the set of which he was the least diva-like star I ever worked with).

It is such an amazing performance, I can't believe he didn't win some awards for it. I gave him a bunch in my head when the movie was over. And his fictional love interest in the flick, played by the extraordinarily beautiful and talented Carmen Ejogo, worked so perfectly with his performance it bought to mind Baker and Gerry Mulligan's collaboration in the brief time they played together, the highlight of both their early music careers (Gerry said Baker was like a musical idiot savant, that he didn't understand lot of basic musical concepts, sometimes not ever aware of what key he was playing in or at least unable to communicate it to others, and yet he intuitively could duet with Mulligan in ways no one was doing at that time).

BORN TO BE BLUE is, for my taste, not just one of the best biopics of recent years (and there have been a lot) but just a lovely little work of art.

DYLAN AND ELIOT

Here's a trippy post (by Josh Jones?) to start off "poetry month" (every day is poetry month to me), Bob Dylan reading the opening lines of T. S. Eliot's "The Wasteland" with  links to Eliot reading his own work and a pretty concise and perceptive analysis of what the two have in common...