Charlie Parker Plays with Jazz Greats Coleman Hawkins, Buddy Rich, Lester Young & Ella Fitzgerald (1950)

In a post ear­li­er this year, we show­cased one of the few known sound films of Char­lie Park­er per­form­ing live. Above, we have anoth­er very rare clip, from 1950, with Park­er, young upstart alto, trad­ing lines with vet­er­an tenor Cole­man Hawkins. Bud­dy Rich plays drums, and Hank Jones and Ray Brown play piano and bass.

Park­er looks char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly cool between the dis­tin­guished poise of Hawkins and the boy­ish exu­ber­ance of nat­ur­al band­leader Bud­dy Rich who, in the sec­ond tune, exudes much goofy enthu­si­asm as he destroys the snare drum. This take may be hard bop at its hard­est, which makes Parker’s under­stat­ed con­test with Hawkins all the more vital, pro­pelled by some of the most fre­net­ic rhythms in jazz his­to­ry.

There is much more after the first two takes, as a voiceover seg­ment announces. The rhythm sec­tion gets a lit­tle time, then they’re joined by Bill Har­ris and Lester Young. And then, at 12:18, the already all-star cast gets round­ed out by a scat­ting Ella Fitzger­ald off stage left, leaned over Hank Jones’ piano. This is a hell of a fun per­for­mance to watch, whether you’re a stu­dent of bop, have a music-his­tor­i­cal bent, or just love see­ing live jazz at the top of its game.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Char­lie Park­er Plays with Dizzy Gille­spie in Only Footage Cap­tur­ing the “Bird” in True Live Per­for­mance

Ella Fitzger­ald Sings ‘Sum­mer­time’ by George Gersh­win, Berlin 1968

Miles Davis Plays Music from Kind of Blue Live in 1959, Intro­duc­ing a Com­plete­ly New Style of Jazz

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Watch Very First Film Adaptations of Shakespeare’s Plays: King John, The Tempest, Richard III & More (1899–1936)

Shake­speare sells: coun­ter­in­tu­itive, but seem­ing­ly true. The film indus­try, which pumps out Shake­speare adap­ta­tions (of vary­ing lev­els of cre­ativ­i­ty) on the reg­u­lar, has known this ever since it could hard­ly have had much aware­ness of itself as a film indus­try. At the top, we have the only sur­viv­ing scene from 1899’s King John, where Shake­speare on screen all start­ed.

“The next three decades would see var­ied approach­es to the chal­lenge of film­ing Shake­speare in a medi­um denied the spo­ken word,” writes the British Film Insti­tute’s Michael Brooke, “from the imag­i­na­tive tableaux-style mime of Per­cy Stow’s The Tem­pest (1908) to trun­cat­ed pro­duc­tions of the major tragedies (Richard III, 1911; Ham­let, 1913).” Excerpts from one of these last, F.R. Ben­son’s Richard III, you can watch just below:

Ear­ly Shake­speare adapters like Ben­son tend­ed to make less Shake­speare films than, as Brooke puts it, “com­pi­la­tions of mem­o­rable moments” from the plays. Then again, every genre of movie attempt­ed sim­ple things back then, and Shake­speare­an pro­duc­tions would grow far rich­er in the sound era, which 1929’s The Tam­ing of the Shrew ush­ered in for the Bard, and with no less a sil­ver-screen leg­end than Mary Pick­ford in the role of Kate.

Sev­en years lat­er, the not-yet-Sir Lau­rence Olivi­er, “cin­e­ma’s first great Shake­speare­an artist,” would make his Shake­speare debut as Orlan­do in Paul Czin­ner’s As You Like It (1936), which you can watch below. He’d almost made this debut as the lead in George Cuko­r’s Romeo & Juli­et, but ulti­mate­ly turned it down.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Shake­speare Sound­ed Like to Shake­speare: Recon­struct­ing the Bard’s Orig­i­nal Pro­nun­ci­a­tion

A Sur­vey of Shakespeare’s Plays (Free Course) 

Shakespeare’s Satir­i­cal Son­net 130, As Read By Stephen Fry

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­lesA Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

The Case for Studying Physics in a Charming Animated Video

Xiangjun Shi, oth­er­wise known as Shix­ie, stud­ied ani­ma­tion at RISD and physics at Brown. Then, she har­nessed her train­ing in both dis­ci­plines to cre­ate an ani­ma­tion explain­ing the virtue of study­ing physics. Pret­ty quick­ly, it gets to the crux of the mat­ter: Study­ing physics will change how you see the world and how you under­stand your place in it, all while let­ting you wrap your mind around some pret­ty elec­tri­fy­ing con­cepts. I think I’m sold!

You can find more videos by Shix­ie here.

H/T to Gareth for send­ing this video our way.…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Physics Cours­es

An Ani­mat­ed His­to­ry of Physics Intro­duces the Dis­cov­er­ies of Galileo, New­ton, Maxwell & Ein­stein

The Hig­gs Boson, AKA the God Par­ti­cle, Explained with Ani­ma­tion

The Famous Feyn­man Lec­tures on Physics: The New Online Edi­tion (in HTML5)

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In One of his Final Interviews, Frank Zappa Pronounces Himself “Totally Unrepentant”

In a year that marks some sig­nif­i­cant pop cul­ture 20th anniver­saries—Wired mag­a­zine, Nirvana’s In Utero, The X‑Files–one in par­tic­u­lar may get some­what less press. This com­ing Decem­ber will be twen­ty years since Frank Zap­pa died of prostate can­cer at age 52, after achiev­ing infamy, noto­ri­ety, and final­ly, actu­al, run-of-the-mill fame. The lat­ter he didn’t seem to cher­ish as much, and cer­tain­ly not dur­ing his sick­ness. Nev­er­the­less, Zap­pa sat for a Today Show inter­view, one of his last, and dis­cussed his cur­rent work and fail­ing health. A young chip­per Katie Couric gives Zap­pa an ambiva­lent intro as the “bizarre per­former with a pen­chant for las­civ­i­ous lyrics.” “What few know,” she goes on to say, “is that he’s also a seri­ous and respect­ed clas­si­cal com­pos­er.” Zappa’s bona fides as a “seri­ous” artist seem to grant him a pass, at least for a bit, from inter­view­er Jamie Gan­gel, who begins ask­ing about the suc­cess­ful per­for­mances of his work in Europe, where he “sells out con­cert halls.”

Zap­pa responds respect­ful­ly, but is obvi­ous­ly quite bored and in pain. He’s sub­dued, down­beat, guard­ed. Then the inevitable grilling begins. “How much do you think you did for the sound and how much for the humor?” asks Gan­gel. “Both,” answers Zap­pa, “The goal here is enter­tain­ment.” Zap­pa pro­nounces him­self “total­ly unre­pen­tant” for his life. In answer to the ques­tion “is there any­thing you’ve done that you felt sor­ry for?” he sim­ply says, “No.”

And why should he con­fess on nation­al tele­vi­sion? There are many more inter­est­ing things to dis­cuss, such as Zappa’s stand against Tip­per Gore’s Par­ents Music Resource Cen­ter (PMRC) dur­ing the leg­endary 1985 Sen­ate Hear­ings (along with Dee Snider and, of all peo­ple, John Den­ver). When the con­ver­sa­tion turns to that his­to­ry, Zap­pa learns a fun fact about Gore that gen­uine­ly catch­es him off-guard. The inter­view goes to some very sad places, and while Zap­pa hangs in there, it’s not par­tic­u­lar­ly enter­tain­ing to see him staunch­ly refuse to view his con­di­tion through Gan­gel’s lens­es. He clear­ly doesn’t see his ill­ness as the­ater and won’t play pen­i­tent or vic­tim.

A much more live­ly inter­view, by a much bet­ter informed inter­view­er, six months before Zap­pa’s death, is with Ben Wat­son for Mojo. In both of these moments, how­ev­er, Zap­pa insists on the only label he ever applied to him­self: he’s an enter­tain­er, noth­ing more. Whether tout­ed as a “clas­si­cal com­pos­er” (a phrase he doesn’t use) or thought of as an artist, Zap­pa to the very end dodged any hint of seri­ous moral inten­tions in his music, which per­haps makes him one of the most hon­est musi­cians in all of pop cul­ture his­to­ry. He saved the seri­ous inten­tions for an are­na much more in need of them. His PMRC hear­ing tes­ti­mo­ny con­tains an elo­quent state­ment of his ethos: “Bad facts make bad laws. And peo­ple who write bad laws are, in my opin­ion, more dan­ger­ous that song­writ­ers who cel­e­brate sex­u­al­i­ty.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Young Frank Zap­pa Plays the Bicy­cle on The Steve Allen Show (1963)

Frank Zap­pa Debates Cen­sor­ship on CNN’s Cross­fire (1986)

Frank Zap­pa Reads NSFW Pas­sage From William Bur­roughs’ Naked Lunch (1978)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.

Watch an Exuberant, Young Woody Allen Do Live Stand Up on British TV (1965)

In 1965, Woody Allen took time out from his first film What’s New Pussy­cat to tape a half-hour of stand up in front of a live tele­vi­sion audi­ence in the UK.

Exu­ber­ant and horny in an adorable, pup­py­ish way, the 30-year-old com­ic seemed to rel­ish this return to his night­club act. The com­e­dy is sit­u­a­tion­al, obser­va­tion­al, auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal — imag­ine Louis CK with a PG vocab­u­lary, no kids, a neck­tie and a twin­kle in his eye. Already ensconced on the Upper East Side, he paints a decid­ed­ly down­town vision of a New York pop­u­lat­ed by artists’ mod­els, swing­ing Ben­ning­ton girls, and women with pierced ears. Like Louis—or the young Brook­lyn hip­sters on Girls—he’s itch­ing to score.

It does a body good to see him at this “child­like” stage of his career.

As he told jour­nal­ist Eric Lax in Con­ver­sa­tions with Woody Allen:

“…comics are child­like and they are suing for the approval of the adults. Some­thing goes on in a the­ater when you’re four­teen years old and you want to get up onstage and make the audi­ence laugh. You’re always the sup­pli­cant, want­i­ng to please and to get warm laughs. Then what hap­pens to comics — they make it and they become a thou­sand times more wealthy than their audi­ence, more famous, more idol­ized, more trav­eled, more cul­ti­vat­ed, more expe­ri­enced, more sophis­ti­cat­ed, and they’re no longer the sup­pli­cant. They can buy and sell their audi­ence, they know so much more than their audi­ence, they have lived and trav­eled around the world a hun­dred times, they’ve dined at Buck­ing­ham Palace and the White House, they have chauf­feured cars and they’re rich and they’ve made love to the world’s most beau­ti­ful women — and sud­den­ly it becomes dif­fi­cult to play that los­er char­ac­ter, because they don’t feel it. Being a sup­pli­cant has become much hard­er to sell. If you’re not care­ful, you can eas­i­ly become less amus­ing, less fun­ny. Many become pompous… A strange thing occurs: You go from court jester to king.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Woody Allen Amus­es Him­self by Giv­ing Untruth­ful Answers in Unaired 1971 TV Inter­view

Woody Allen Lists the Great­est Films of All Time: Includes Clas­sics by Bergman, Truf­faut & Felli­ni

Woody Allen Box­es a Kan­ga­roo, 1966

Ayun Hal­l­i­day won­ders that she has yet to bump into this famous and cur­mud­geon­ly  New York­er.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

“Titanic Sinking; No Lives Lost” and Other Terribly Inaccurate News Reports from April 15, 1912

Titanic-Sinking-No-Lives-Lost

Over at the Retro­naut they’ve high­light­ed some ear­ly, over­ly-opti­mistic news­pa­per reports that came out after the Titan­ic sank in the frigid waters of the North Atlantic Ocean on April 15, 1912. The World report­ed “Titan­ic Sink­ing; No Lives Lost.”  The Van­cou­ver Dai­ly Province declared “The Titan­ic Sink­ing, But Prob­a­bly No Lives Lost.” Mean­while, The New York Times got clos­er to the truth with its lengthy head­line: “Titan­ic Sinks Four Hours After Hit­ting Ice­berg; 866 Res­cued By Carpathia, Prob­a­bly 1,250 Per­ish; Ismay Safe, Mrs. Astor Maybe, Not­ed Names Miss­ing.” The real death toll climbed to 1,514. Last year, on the 100th anniver­sary of the mar­itime tragedy, Christo­pher Sul­li­van, an edi­tor at the Asso­ci­at­ed Press, researched the sto­ry and tried to explain how news­pa­pers fell so short of the mark. Speak­ing to the web site Journalism.co.uk he gave this expla­na­tion:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Titan­ic: Rare Footage Before Dis­as­ter Strikes

How the Titan­ic Sank: James Cameron’s New CGI Ani­ma­tion

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Watch Slipping Storm Troopers in Previously Unseen Blooper Reel & Outtakes from Star Wars

The “bloop­er” reel above from the film­ing of Star Wars: Episode 4, we’re told by io9, is “brand new” footage. Brand new to us, of course. Dis­cov­ered by a Red­di­tor, it made the rounds yes­ter­day and every­one pro­nounced it amaz­ing. And so it is. Many scenes lack audio, mak­ing the humor all the more sub­tle. We get some line flubs, action scenes gone awk­ward, and the vin­tage ear­ly title below.

SWVintageTitle

If you’re any­thing like every­one else I know who’s seen this (if you’re read­ing this—you like­ly are), you’ll watch the two and a‑half minute reel at least two or three times, if not more. And if you find your­self less than jazzed about the com­ing of Star Wars: Episode 7 (or about the exis­tence of episodes 1–3), we’ll at least have the hun­dreds of new memes spawned by this ridicu­lous footage. As i09 says, “get to GIF-ing, peo­ple.” And get to writ­ing dia­logue for those silent scenes.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the Very First Trail­ers for Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back & Return of the Jedi (1976–83)

Pho­tog­ra­ph­er Revis­its Aban­doned Movie Sets for Star Wars and Oth­er Clas­sic Films in North Africa

Star Wars Uncut: The Epic Fan Film

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.

“Neglected Books” You Should Read: Here’s Our List; Now We Want Yours

the-confidence-man

Last week we high­light­ed a fea­ture from the excel­lent web­site Neglect­ed Books detail­ing two arti­cles that appeared in The New Repub­lic in 1934 on “good books that almost nobody has read.” The arti­cles were the prod­uct of a query the magazine’s edi­tor, Mal­colm Cow­ley, sent out to the lit­er­ary com­mu­ni­ty of his day, ask­ing them to list their favorite unsung books. Such lists are bound fast to their his­tor­i­cal con­text; fame is fleet­ing, and great works are for­got­ten and redis­cov­ered in every gen­er­a­tion. Some of the books named then—like Franz Kafka’s The Cas­tle or Nathaniel West’s Miss Lone­ly­hearts—have since gone on to noto­ri­ety. Most of them have not. This week, we thought we’d con­tin­ue the theme with our own list of “neglect­ed books.” I offer mine below, and I encour­age read­ers to name your own in the com­ments. We’ll fea­ture many of your sug­ges­tions in a fol­low-up post.

A few words about my by-no-means-defin­i­tive-and-cer­tain­ly-incom­plete list. These are not obscure works. And you’ll note that there are almost no recent works on it. This is due at least as much to my own lam­en­ta­ble igno­rance of much con­tem­po­rary lit­er­a­ture as to a con­vic­tion that a work that isn’t wide­ly read months after its pub­li­ca­tion is not, there­by, “neglect­ed.” In the age of the inter­net, books can age well even after they’re remain­dered, since instant com­mu­ni­ties of read­ers spring up overnight on fan­sites and places like Goodreads. Instead, my list con­sists of a few neglect­ed clas­sics and a book of poet­ry that I per­son­al­ly think should all be read by many more peo­ple than they are, and that I think are time­ly for one rea­son or anoth­er. Maybe some of these books have got­ten their due in some small cir­cles, and in some cas­es, their influ­ence is much greater than sales fig­ures can ever reflect. But they’re works more peo­ple should read, not sim­ply read about, so I offer you below five titles I think are “neglect­ed books.” You may inter­pret that phrase any way you like when you sub­mit your own sug­ges­tions.

  •  Cane by Jean Toomer

Jean Toomer’s Cane is well-known to stu­dents of the Harlem Renais­sance, but it isn’t read much out­side that aca­d­e­m­ic con­text, I think, which is a shame because it is a beau­ti­ful book. Not a nov­el, but a col­lec­tion of short sto­ries, poems, and lit­er­ary sketch­es inspired by Toomer’s stint as a sub­sti­tute prin­ci­pal in Spar­ta, Geor­gia in 1921, Cane prac­ti­cal­ly vibrates with the furi­ous and frag­ile lives of a col­lec­tion of char­ac­ters in the Jim Crow South. Yet like all great books, it tran­scends its set­ting, ele­vat­ing its sub­jects to arche­typ­al sta­tus and immor­tal­iz­ing a time and place that seems to live only in car­i­ca­ture now. Read the first sketch, “Karintha,” and see what I mean.

Olive Schrein­er is anoth­er writer who receives her due in schol­ar­ly cir­cles but is lit­tle read out­side the class­room. Schrein­er was a white South African woman who turned her expe­ri­ences of race, gen­der, and nation to lit­er­ary fame with her nov­el The Sto­ry of an African Farm in 1883. The novel’s suc­cess at the time did not nec­es­sar­i­ly grant its author last­ing fame, and while Schrein­er has been laud­ed for trans­form­ing Vic­to­ri­an lit­er­a­ture with her free­think­ing, fem­i­nist views, the book that once made her famous is an almost shock­ing­ly un-Vic­to­ri­an work. Short, stark, impres­sion­is­tic, and very unsen­ti­men­tal, The Sto­ry of an African Farm may find pur­chase with schol­ars for his­tor­i­cal or polit­i­cal rea­sons, but it should be read for its stun­ning prose descrip­tions and pierc­ing dia­logue.

 Car­pen­tier was a Cuban nov­el­ist, schol­ar, and musi­col­o­gist who is not much read in the Eng­lish-speak­ing world, and per­haps not much in Latin Amer­i­ca. Although he coined the term “mag­i­cal real­ism” (lo real mar­avil­loso)—as part of his the­o­ry that Latin Amer­i­can his­to­ry is so out­landish as to seem unreal—his lit­er­ary fame in the States has nev­er reached the degree of more fan­tas­tic prac­ti­tion­ers of the style. Although per­haps best known, where he is known, for his harsh tale of Haiti’s first king, the bru­tal Hen­ri Christophe, in The King­dom of this World, Carpentier’s com­plex and mys­te­ri­ous 1953 The Lost Steps is a nov­el that jus­ti­fies my call­ing him the Nabokov of Latin Amer­i­can let­ters.

Melville was cer­tain­ly a neglect­ed writer in his time. He is, it should go with­out say­ing, no more. But while every­one knows Moby Dick (if not many fin­ish it), Bil­ly Budd, and “Bartel­by,” few peo­ple read his, yes dif­fi­cult, nov­el The Con­fi­dence Man. Also called The Con­fi­dence Man: His Mas­quer­ade, this was Melville’s last pub­lished nov­el in his life­time. It’s a dark­ly com­ic book that some­times sounds a bit like Twain in its col­or­ful ver­nac­u­lar and shift­ing reg­is­ters, but grows stranger and more unset­tling as it pro­gress­es, becom­ing almost a cacoph­o­ny of dis­em­bod­ied voic­es in a state of moral pan­ic. The cen­tral char­ac­ter, a name­less shape-shift­ing grifter on a steam­boat called the Fidele, takes on a suc­ces­sion of Amer­i­can iden­ti­ties, all of them thor­ough­ly per­sua­sive and all of them thor­ough­ly, cal­cu­lat­ed­ly, false.

The only book of poet­ry on my list also hap­pens to be the only book by a liv­ing writer. It also hap­pens to be a book that makes me trem­ble each time I think of it. De Kok, a South African poet, takes as her inspi­ra­tion for her 2002 Ter­res­tri­al Things the tran­scripts from her country’s Truth and Rec­on­cil­i­a­tion Com­mis­sion. I’ll leave you with an excerpt from “The Sound Engi­neer,” a poem pref­aced by the mat­ter-of-fact state­ment that the “high­est turnover” dur­ing the Com­mis­sion, “was appar­ent­ly among reporters edit­ing sound for radio.”

Lis­ten, cut; com­ma, cut;

stam­mer, cut;

edit, pain; con­nect, pain; broad­cast, pain;

lis­ten, cut; com­ma, cut.

Bind gram­mar to hor­ror,

blood heat­ing to the ear­phones,

beat­ing the air­waves’ wings.

 

For truth’s sound bite,

tape the teeth, mouth, jaw,

put hes­i­ta­tion in, take it out:

maybe the breath too.

Take away the lips.

Even the tongue.

Leave just sound’s throat.

So there you have my list. I hope it has inspired you to go dis­cov­er some­thing new (or old). If not, I hope you will sub­mit your own neglect­ed books in the com­ments below and share your hid­den lit­er­ary trea­sures with our read­ers.

Pub­lic domain books list­ed above will be added to our col­lec­tion of 500 Free eBooks.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Famous Writ­ers Name “Good Books That Almost Nobody Has Read” in The New Repub­lic (1934)

20 Books Peo­ple Pre­tend to Read (and Now Your Con­fes­sions?)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.

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