‘Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire’: Nat King Cole Sings ‘The Christmas Song,’ 1957

in Music, Television | December 25th, 2012

It is, arguably, the most beau­ti­ful ver­sion of the most pop­u­lar hol­i­day tune: Nat King Cole singing “The Christ­mas Song” in his vel­vety-smooth bari­tone voice. Cole actu­al­ly record­ed the song four times between 1946 and 1961, but it’s the last record­ing that is most often played on the radio and in stores dur­ing the hol­i­day sea­son.

“The Christ­mas Song” was writ­ten on a swel­ter­ing sum­mer day in south­ern Cal­i­for­nia by the croon­er Mel Tor­mé and his writ­ing part­ner, Robert Wells. Tor­mé and Wells had been hired to write a pair of movie scores. Com­plain­ing about the heat one day, the two men began talk­ing about win­ter at high­er lat­i­tudes. Wells jot­ted down a few men­tal images. “I saw a spi­ral pad on his piano with four lines writ­ten in pen­cil, “writes Tor­mé in his auto­bi­og­ra­phy It Was­n’t All Vel­vet. “They start­ed, ‘Chest­nuts roast­ing … Jack Frost nip­ping … Yule­tide car­ols … Folks dressed up like Eski­mos.’ Bob did­n’t think he was writ­ing a song lyric. He said he thought if he could immerse him­self in win­ter, he could cool off.”

When the song was com­plet­ed, Tor­mé imme­di­ate­ly thought of his friend Cole, accord­ing to Ace Collins in his book Sto­ries Behind the Great­est Hits of Christ­mas. The two song­writ­ers drove to Cole’s house in Los Ange­les and played it for him. Cole liked the song, and asked the writ­ers to hold it for him while he made arrange­ments to record it. Cole first record­ed “The Christ­mas Song” with his jazz trio in New York on June 14, 1946. Lat­er arrange­ments includ­ed strings and grew pro­gres­sive­ly more lush. The scene above is from the very last episode of The Nat King Cole Show, broad­cast live on Decem­ber 17, 1957. Cole is accom­pa­nied by Nel­son Rid­dle and his orches­tra.

For those cel­e­brat­ing today, we can think of no bet­ter way to send you our greet­ings than with this mov­ing per­for­mance, which ends with the mem­o­rable lines:

And so I’m offer­ing this sim­ple phrase
To kids from one to nine­ty-two
Although it’s been said many times
Many ways, Mer­ry Christ­mas to you

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Watch The Snowman, the Classic Animated Children’s Tale Introduced by David Bowie

in Animation, Film, Television | December 23rd, 2012

Thir­ty years ago the British tele­vi­sion com­pa­ny Chan­nel Four pre­miered this enchant­i­ng, lyri­cal film based on the award-win­ning Ray­mond Brig­gs chil­dren’s book, The Snow­man.

The tale bears some resem­blance to the ear­li­er Amer­i­can sto­ry, “Frosty the Snow­man,” but probes deep­er into the psy­chol­o­gy of chil­dren, con­vey­ing the fear and won­der they feel in a mys­te­ri­ous world, and their long­ing for friend­ship and mag­ic. It’s more ele­gant­ly told, too, using only pic­tures and music to con­vey the sto­ry. And just as Mau­rice Sendak said “I refuse to lie to chil­dren,” Brig­gs refus­es to pro­vide a Hol­ly­wood end­ing.

The orig­i­nal ver­sion of The Snow­man includes an intro­duc­tion by Brig­gs. A lat­er ver­sion (see above) has a sim­i­lar intro­duc­tion by David Bowie, who plays the grownup boy from the sto­ry. As the intro­duc­tion ends, Bowie opens a draw­er and pulls out a scarf that was giv­en to him dur­ing his adven­ture with the snow­man, prov­ing that it was not just a dream.

In 1983, The Snow­man was nom­i­nat­ed for an Acad­e­my Award. It ranks 71st on the British Film Insti­tute’s list of the 100 great­est British tele­vi­sion pro­grams and was vot­ed num­ber four in UKTV Gold’s “Great­est TV Christ­mas Moments.” Watch­ing The Snow­man has become a hol­i­day tra­di­tion in the UK in much the same way that watch­ing A Char­lie Brown Christ­mas has in Amer­i­ca. Tonight in Britain, Chan­nel 4 will pre­miere the long-await­ed sequel, The Snow­man and the Snow­dog, set 30 years lat­er at the same house but with a dif­fer­ent boy.

Relat­ed con­tent:

David Bowie and Bing Cros­by Sing ‘The Lit­tle Drum­mer Boy’ in 1977

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Annie Leibovitz, Photographer of Icons and Iconic Photographer, Profiled on American Masters

in Photography, Television | December 14th, 2012

One must take care, when writ­ing about well-con­nect­ed cul­tur­al fig­ures, not to abuse the word icon­ic. But when one writes about the pho­tog­ra­ph­er Annie Lei­bovitz, one almost has to abuse it. Here we have a woman who took two of the most mem­o­rable pho­tos of John Lennon, col­lab­o­rat­ed (to the extent pos­si­ble) with Hunter S. Thomp­son, went on tour with the Rolling Stones, fol­lowed Richard Nixon out of the White House the last time he left it, con­vinced Whoopi Gold­berg to get into a bath­tub of milk, and loved Susan Son­tag. This whole post could­n’t pos­si­bly con­tain a com­plete list of her pro­fes­sion­al and per­son­al involve­ment with the, yes, icons of twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry pop­u­lar cul­ture. Her por­traits of them became icons them­selves, which, in turn, made Lei­bovitz her­self icon­ic. For a visu­al­ly rich sense of the scope of her life and career, look no fur­ther than the doc­u­men­tary above, Life Through a Lens.

This 2008 pro­duc­tion comes from the PBS-dis­trib­uted Amer­i­can Mas­ters tele­vi­sion series, which we fea­tured on Tues­day. Direct­ed by Lei­bovitz’s own sis­ter and there­fore pos­sessed of the unusu­al famil­ial insight you’d expect, Life Through a Lens also includes a great many of the hard-to-inter­view lumi­nar­ies with­out which no pro­file of this pho­tog­ra­ph­er could be com­plete. We hear from Arnold Schwarzeneg­ger, Jann Wen­ner, Hillary Clin­ton, Glo­ria Steinem, Pat­ti Smith, Mick Jag­ger, Kei­th Richards, Bette Midler, Yoko Ono, and George Clooney, to name but a few of her admir­ers who’ve held their own at the busi­ness end of her cam­era. In the four years since this doc­u­men­tary, Lei­bovitz’s pho­tographs — now of 21st-cen­tu­ry celebri­ties like Miley Cyrus, Sasha Baron Cohen, Lady Gaga, Rihan­na, and LeBron James —  have con­tin­ued to impress in the pages of Vogue and Van­i­ty Fair. When­ev­er some­one ris­es toward icon­ic sta­tus, Annie Lei­bovitz’s visu­al imag­i­na­tion can’t be far behind.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Watch PBS’ Amer­i­can Mas­ters Doc­u­men­taries (Includ­ing Scorsese’s Homage to Kazan) Free Online

Alfred Stieglitz: The Elo­quent Eye, a Reveal­ing Look at “The Father of Mod­ern Pho­tog­ra­phy”

1972 Diane Arbus Doc­u­men­tary Inter­views Those Who Knew the Amer­i­can Pho­tog­ra­ph­er Best

Hen­ri Carti­er-Bres­son and the Deci­sive Moment

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

 

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Watch PBS’ American Masters Documentaries (Including Scorsese’s Homage to Kazan) Free Online

in Television | December 11th, 2012

Each new Amer­i­can Mas­ters broad­cast, when it debuts on tele­vi­sion, tends to receive a hero’s wel­come. The poten­tial for hero­ism on the part of a bio­graph­i­cal doc­u­men­tary may, of course, seem lim­it­ed, but their astute­ness and atten­tion to detail does put them on a lev­el above. Pro­duced by New York City’s Thirteen/WNET and dis­trib­uted by the Pub­lic Broad­cast­ing Ser­vice, the show has for 26 years told the life sto­ries of cre­ators of all types, Amer­i­can-born and oth­er­wise, who have made an impact on U.S. cul­ture. Last month, we fea­tured Woody Allen answer­ing thir­teen unusu­al ques­tions from Robert B. Wei­de, direc­tor of the series’ recent Woody Allen: A Doc­u­men­tary. That episode stirred up quite a flur­ry of admi­ra­tion, as did the more recent Invent­ing David Gef­fen, a por­trait of the enter­tain­ment indus­try titan direct­ed by Amer­i­can Mas­ters cre­ator Susan Lacy — which you can watch free at PBS.org.

And that’s not the only one. Any self-respect­ing fan of Amer­i­can cin­e­ma will want to watch the pro­gram above, A Let­ter to Elia. It show­cas­es a qual­i­ty often cit­ed as one of Amer­i­can Mas­ters’ great strengths: its match­es of sub­ject and doc­u­men­tar­i­an. In this case, we get the life of Elia Kazan, direc­tor of clas­sic pic­tures like On the Water­front and East of Eden, as described by Mar­tin Scors­ese, direc­tor of such promis­ing can­di­dates for clas­sic sta­tus as Taxi Dri­ver and Rag­ing Bull. The doc­u­men­tary exam­ines not only Kazan’s life and work but Scors­ese’s rela­tion­ship to it, and from there, any young artist’s rela­tion­ship to art itself. PBS has also made freely avail­able their broad­casts on John­ny Car­son, Jeff Bridges, Charles and Ray Eames, and quite a few oth­ers besides. If the cul­ture of a coun­try as vast and young as the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca remains dif­fi­cult to pin down, it cer­tain­ly isn’t for Amer­i­can Mas­ters’ lack of try­ing.

Var­i­ous episodes have been added to our col­lec­tion of 500 Free Movies Online.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Alfred Stieglitz: The Elo­quent Eye, a Reveal­ing Look at “The Father of Mod­ern Pho­tog­ra­phy”

Ein­stein Doc­u­men­tary Offers A Reveal­ing Por­trait of the Great 20th Cen­tu­ry Sci­en­tist

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Schoolhouse Rock: Revisit a Collection of Nostalgia-Inducing Educational Videos

in Animation, Education, K-12, Television | December 6th, 2012

Some­times a tune lives in your head and you hum it now and again with­out any rec­ol­lec­tion of where it orig­i­nal­ly came from. Chances are, if you grew up in the Unit­ed States watch­ing Sat­ur­day morn­ing car­toons, that tune came from School­house Rock.

Like so many of its biggest fans, School­house Rock is now offi­cial­ly in its 40s. This year marks the 40th anniver­sary of the pilot seg­ment, Three is a Mag­ic Num­ber, whose melody and lyrics ooze the type of hip­pie Sun­shine Fam­i­ly whole­some­ness so abun­dant in ‘70s children’s pro­gram­ming.

Man and a woman had a lit­tle baby,

Yes they did.

They had three in the fam­i­ly.

And that’s a mag­ic num­ber

Fol­low that up with School­house Rock’s win­ning for­mu­la: sim­ple, hum­ma­ble tunes mixed with math fact lyrics.

3–6‑9, 12–15-18, 21–24-27, 30.
3–6‑9, 12–15-18, 21–24-27, 30.

School­house Rock start­ed out as an adver­tis­ing ven­ture on ABC, dreamed up by an exec­u­tive whose son was strug­gling to mem­o­rize his mul­ti­pli­ca­tion tables. But it grew into the most pop­u­lar inter­sti­tial pro­gram­ming (short vignettes shown between TV seg­ments) in mod­ern tele­vi­sion.

One of the most mem­o­rable melodies is Blos­som Dearie’s sweet and melan­choly Fig­ure Eight, broad­cast in Feb­ru­ary, 1973. This one was cov­ered by Eliot Smith in a decid­ed­ly less upbeat ver­sion.

With­out a doubt these three-minute ani­ma­tions (by Loonie Tunes ani­ma­tor Chuck Jones) are some of the best mod­ern edu­ca­tion­al videos around. Whose social stud­ies teacher didn’t show this tune­ful expla­na­tion of the leg­isla­tive process dur­ing class?

And this one about the Con­sti­tu­tion, well I have to admit that it still chokes me up.

The man behind the vast major­i­ty of the music is Bob Dor­ough, a pianist who worked with Miles Davis and Allen Gins­berg before becom­ing the voice and main com­pos­er for School­house Rock.


The series took on near­ly every sub­ject, from mul­ti­pli­ca­tion and gram­mar to sci­ence and Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment. Today’s edu­ca­tion­al soft­ware devel­op­ers would kill to make gram­mar as fun as Con­junc­tion Junc­tion and Lol­ly, Lol­ly, Lol­ly Get Your Adverbs Here.  The pro­duc­ers didn’t shy away from more weighty issues either. Take a lis­ten to this lit­tle dit­ty on the theme of Amer­i­can ter­ri­to­r­i­al expan­sion.

The series took a break dur­ing the 1980s but picked up again in the mid-’90s with Mon­ey Rock. In 2009 came Earth Rock. Both fea­tured a more gloom-and-doom feel than the inspir­ing tone of the ear­li­er School­house Rock iter­a­tions.

Some­times the orig­i­nal real­ly is the best.

You can pur­chase the com­plete set of School­house Rock videos on Ama­zon. We’ve also added a link to this post in our new col­lec­tion: 200 Free Kids Edu­ca­tion­al Resources: Video Lessons, Apps, Books, Web­sites & More

Kate Rix writes about dig­i­tal media and edu­ca­tion. Read more of her work at and thenifty.blogspot.com. 

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 5 ) |

Every Apple Ad Ever Aired on TV

in Apple, Television | December 2nd, 2012

Intro­duc­ing a new YouTube Chan­nel that gives you every Apple ad ever aired on TV — 485 ads, in total.

You can start with the icon­ic ones — the 1984 Super Bowl com­mer­cial direct­ed by Rid­ley Scott, which aired just weeks after Steve Jobs demoed the first Mac­In­tosh ever. Or, the famous “Think Dif­fer­ent” cam­paign from the late 1990s. The offi­cial “Think Dif­fer­ent” video was nar­rat­ed by Richard Drey­fuss, but we’d encour­age you to spend time with the nev­er-aired ver­sion nar­rat­ed by Jobs him­self. Oth­er vin­tage ads can be found in these chrono­log­i­cal­ly-orga­nized lists: 1977–1985, 1985–1996, 1996–2007 and 2007–2011. The 1981 Dick Cavett clip above appears in the first group.


But the col­lec­tion also lets you sort ads the­mat­i­cal­ly. So, for exam­ple, you can jump into the U.S. Get a Mac cam­paign, where you’ll get plen­ty of John Hodg­man. Also find ver­sions of the same cam­paign from the UK and Japan. Final­ly, Apple ads fea­tur­ing celebri­ties — from Bob Dylan to Zooey Deschanel to Spike Lee — are all neat­ly pack­aged togeth­er too. H/T @coudal

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Conan O’Brien Plays Charlie Rose, Talks Presidential History with Edmund Morris

in History, Television | November 30th, 2012

“This is my dream job,” Conan O’Brien says while in con­ver­sa­tion with pres­i­den­tial biog­ra­ph­er Edmund Mor­ris. He did­n’t say it when he brought Mor­ris onto Conan, his late-night talk show on TBS. He says it on Seri­ous Jib­ber-Jab­ber, an alto­geth­er dif­fer­ent oper­a­tion. On Conan, he talked to Mor­ris for sev­en min­utes; on Seri­ous Jib­ber-Jab­ber, they talk for 47 min­utes. Offi­cial­ly described as a web series where­in “Conan O’Brien has lengthy, unin­ter­rupt­ed con­ver­sa­tions with inter­est­ing peo­ple on top­ics which fas­ci­nate him,” the show casts the icon of Gen‑X irrev­er­ence not as a pur­vey­or of intel­li­gent silli­ness, but as a con­ver­sa­tion­al­ist in the mold of Char­lie Rose. In any case, he does it prac­ti­cal­ly on the set of Char­lie Rose: a table, chairs, a back­ground of purest black, and no fur­ther dis­trac­tions. (If you’re going to bor­row, they say, bor­row from the best.) O’Brien’s fol­low­ers may not know he has a fer­vent inter­est in pres­i­den­tial his­to­ry, but after watch­ing his inter­view with the man who wrote three vol­umes on Theodore Roo­sevelt and one on Ronald Rea­gan, they’ll cer­tain­ly have found out.

Though the show’s title con­tains the word Seri­ous and O’Brien speaks with gen­uine curios­i­ty through­out, it also con­tains the words Jib­ber-Jab­ber, and I doubt he has it in him not to crack jokes. This is wel­come, and a rea­son why I’d like to see him direct all of Team Coco’s con­sid­er­able resources to these inter­views from now on. He even gets into the sub­ject of pres­i­den­tial sens­es of humor — evi­dent­ly pres­i­dents aren’t allowed to have them any­more — which he picks up again in the show’s sec­ond inter­view, with com­e­dy writer and film­mak­er Judd Apa­tow. Though we get a warn­ing that O’Brien will only tape more of these con­ver­sa­tions “when­ev­er time and fate allow,” I per­son­al­ly await the next one with bat­ed breath. Some­how, the man who gave the world the Horny Man­a­tee, the Coked-Up Were­wolf, and the immor­tal Mas­tur­bat­ing Bear real­ized the most impor­tant thing about view­ers like you and me: we’d much rather watch two peo­ple dis­cuss enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly and at length sub­jects that inter­est them rather than swift­ly man­gle sub­jects they guess might inter­est us.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Conan O’Brien Writes Chica­go Blues Songs With School Kids

Conan O’Brien @ Google

Conan O’Brien Kills It at Dart­mouth Grad­u­a­tion

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Watch The Mind of a Chef, the Unconventional Travel-Cooking Show Online (for a Limited Time)

in Television | November 26th, 2012

Ear­li­er this month, PBS pre­miered The Mind of a Chef, a 16-episode series that fea­tures nar­ra­tor Antho­ny Bour­dain tak­ing view­ers inside the mind of the award-win­ning Kore­an-Amer­i­can chef David Chang. In the series pre­miere above, David “dis­sects the roots of his pas­sion for ramen dish­es and tsuke­men on a trip to Japan,” giv­ing you an overview of the famous noo­dle and tak­ing you right to a ramen fac­to­ry. If the first episode, um, whets your appetite, then you’ll want to spend time with nine oth­er episodes from the series. They’re now post­ed online for a lim­it­ed time, cour­tesy of PBS, and they each run about 20 min­utes. But don’t dil­ly dal­ly, some will go offline on Novem­ber 30.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Wim Wen­ders Vis­its, Mar­vels at a Japan­ese Fake Food Work­shop

Woody Allen Lives the “Deli­cious Life” in Ear­ly-80s Japan­ese Com­mer­cials

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

« Go Back — More in this category... »
Quantcast