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1910 #1 hits : discs rule!

Bert Williams (pictured)

According to A Century of Pop Music: “By 1910, discs had assumed full dominance of the popular record market over wax cylinders…” And that advantage “expanded every year…”

Joel Whitburn explains, “Sheet music sales achieved an all-time high in 1910, with published estimates ranging from 30 million to substantially more. Two six-million sellers were ‘Let Me Call You Sweetheart’ and ‘Down By the Old Mill Stream.'” I know both quite well, and I’m not nearly that old. “Not the new, but the old…”

Another popular song from 1910, Put On Your Old Gray Bonnet by Arthur Clough (#3) and the popular Haydn Quartet, among others.

Casey Jones – Billy Murray & the American Quartet (RCA Victor), 11 weeks at #1. Though the RIAA didn’t start certifying records until more than 40 years later, it was designated a gold single. It was “one of the biggest sellers of the entire acoustic recording era.” Billy Murray also had a #3 hit as a solo artist that same summer.

By the Light of the Silvery Moon – Billy Murray and the Haydn Quartet (RCA Victor), 9 weeks at #1. Billy Murray was ubiquitous in this period. The song also went to #2 as performed by both the Columbia Male Quartet and Ada Jones. The Tin Pan Alley standard was first performed on-stage by Lillian Lorraine in the “Ziegfeld Follies of 1909.” Another song that is still a classic over a century later.

More hits

Where the River Shannon Flows – Harry MacDonough, 6 weeks at #1. The Irish Swanee River.

Play That Barber-Shop Chord – Bert Williams, 6 weeks at #1. “Bert Williams (November 12, 1874 – March 4, 1922) was a Bahamian American and was one of the pre-eminent entertainers of the Vaudeville era and one of the most popular comedians for all audiences of his time. He was by far the best-selling black recording artist before 1920. In 1918, the New York Dramatic Mirror called Williams “one of the great comedians of the world.”

Every Little Movement – Harry MacDonough & Lucy Isabelle Marsh, 4 weeks at #1.

Call Me Up Some Rainy Afternoon – Ada Jones & American Quartet (Columbia), 4 weeks at #1. Written by Irving Berlin.

Meet Me To-Night In Dreamland – Henry Burr, 4 weeks at #1.

Carrie (Carrie Marry Harry) – Billy Murray, 2 weeks at #1.

In the Valley of Yesterday – Harry MacDonough (RCA Victor), 2 weeks at #1. Recorded in 1905.

Tramp! Tramp! Tramp! – Byron Harlan & Frank Stanley, 1 week at #1. Apparently recorded in 1907.

Oscars so early! (Why is that?)

I saw 7 of the 9 Best Picture noms

Best Picture Oscars 2020
Why are the Oscars so early this year? In 2020, they’ll be on Sunday, February 9. The previous earliest date was February 22, and it’s often in late February or March.

If the idea of nominating a film is, in part, to perhaps give it a boost, an Academy Awards presentation so early negates that. Since the Oscar nominations voting closed on January 7, it’s likely that some of the voting members didn’t even get a chance to see all the potential films. This is especially true of the short films, a group of which I almost always viewed at the Spectrum Theatre in Albany.

I have seen seven out of the nine Best Picture nominations as of this writing, though I haven’t yet written about Marriage Story. Here are the nominees. If I saw it, I put a * the first time I linked to my review.

Acting

Performance by an actor in a leading role:

Antonio Banderas in PAIN AND GLORY
Leonardo DiCaprio in ONCE UPON A TIME…IN HOLLYWOOD
**Adam Driver in MARRIAGE STORY – He’s always very good in a variety of roles.
Joaquin Phoenix in JOKER
Jonathan Pryce in THE TWO POPES

I’ve seen one of them. I was wary of seeing JOKER and ONCE UPON A TIME. Still,if I hadn’t been sick this week, I might have seen one of the two. The others I just missed.

Performance by an actor in a supporting role:

*Tom Hanks in A BEAUTIFUL DAY IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD
Anthony Hopkins in THE TWO POPES
*Al Pacino in THE IRISHMAN
*Joe Pesci in THE IRISHMAN
Brad Pitt in ONCE UPON A TIME…IN HOLLYWOOD

Pitt is the insiders’ favorite. Of the ones I saw, I liked Pacino, though Hanks’ role was harder than it seemed.

Performance by an actress in a leading role:

*Cynthia Erivo in HARRIET
*Scarlett Johansson in MARRIAGE STORY
*Saoirse Ronan in LITTLE WOMEN
*Charlize Theron in BOMBSHELL
Renée Zellweger in JUDY

Zellweger will win. Erivo, though, was amazing.

Performance by an actress in a supporting role:

*Kathy Bates in RICHARD JEWELL
*Laura Dern in MARRIAGE STORY
*Scarlett Johansson in JOJO RABBIT
*Florence Pugh in LITTLE WOMEN
*Margot Robbie in BOMBSHELL

Pugh nearly stole the movie and is my favorite. There is a Dernaissance, and she’ll probably win. Johansson was great, but will likely get two acting nominations and no wins.

Directing and screenplays

Achievement in directing:

*THE IRISHMAN Martin Scorsese
JOKER Todd Phillips
*1917 Sam Mendes
ONCE UPON A TIME…IN HOLLYWOOD Quentin Tarantino
*PARASITE Bong Joon Ho

Rooting for Mendes.

Adapted screenplay nominees:

*THE IRISHMAN Screenplay by Steven Zaillian
*JOJO RABBIT Screenplay by Taika Waititi
JOKER Written by Todd Phillips & Scott Silver
*LITTLE WOMEN Written for the screen by Greta Gerwig
THE TWO POPES Written by Anthony McCarten

Gerwig’s consolation prize for not getting nominated for Best Director. But it IS deserved. I also liked Waititi. The Irishman, if I were honest, was too damn long.

Original screenplay nominees:

*KNIVES OUT Written by Rian Johnson. Fun!
*MARRIAGE STORY Written by Noah Baumbach. Exhausting.
*1917 Written by Sam Mendes & Krysty Wilson-Cairns
ONCE UPON A TIME…IN HOLLYWOOD Written by Quentin Tarantino
*PARASITE Screenplay by Bong Joon Ho, Han Jin Won; Story by Bong Joon Ho. The most original.

Best motion picture of the year

*FORD V FERRARI Peter Chernin, Jenno Topping and James Mangold, Producers
*THE IRISHMAN Martin Scorsese, Robert De Niro, Jane Rosenthal and Emma Tillinger Koskoff, Producers
*JOJO RABBIT Carthew Neal and Taika Waititi, Producers
JOKER Todd Phillips, Bradley Cooper and Emma Tillinger Koskoff, Producers
*LITTLE WOMEN Amy Pascal, Producer
*MARRIAGE STORY Noah Baumbach and David Heyman, Producers
*1917 Sam Mendes, Pippa Harris, Jayne-Ann Tenggren and Callum McDougall, Producers
ONCE UPON A TIME…IN HOLLYWOOD David Heyman, Shannon McIntosh and Quentin Tarantino, Producers
*PARASITE Kwak Sin Ae and Bong Joon Ho, Producers; also nominated as best international film

JOJO, LITTLE WOMEN, PARASITE, 1917 – very different films, and if any of them won, it’d be fine by me.

The only other nominated film I saw:
*TOY STORY 4 Josh Cooley, Mark Nielsen and Jonas Rivera for Best animated feature film of the year; also Best song.

Review: Jack Kirby’s Dingbat Love

looking for Ebony

Having read an advanced copy (PDF) of Jack Kirby’s Dingbat Love, I now understand the title. It’s a bit of a portmanteau. I fear, though, tha the casual reader will misunderstand it as just romance comics featuring not very bright people.

As Steve Sherman, one of Kirby’s assistants in the 1970s notes in one of the text pieces, “Dingbat” is what Archie Bunker called his wife Edith on the TV show All in the Family. But Jack had named the “kid gang” he drew and wrote the Dingbats of Danger Street. They had a few issues in the mid-1970s, but I somehow missed them.

And I did read Kirby in this period: New Gods, Kamandi, and OMAC among them, even though I was primarily a Marvel fan then. Dingbats is an entertaining read, especially when inked by Mike Royer and D. Bruce Berry, and colored especially for the book.

All you need is…

The “Love” angle in the title is represented by True-Life Divorce, an abandoned newsstand magazine. Also stories from Soul Love, a romance book inked by Vince Colletta and Tony DeZuniga finally sees the light of day. The dialogue was occasionally clunky, but the stories were surprisingly good. The Kirby women, for the most part, were realistically zaftig.

The discussion of WHY these items were not published at the time is nearly as entertaining as the strips. Editor John Morrow examines the era, while Jerry Boyd analyzes Soul Love. Kirby assistant Mark Evanier explains going to several stores looking for Ebony magazines. Kirby wanted them as references for faces of black people, but they were hard to find in Thousand Oaks, CA.

Still, as Morrow noted, “What was unprecedented was Kirby’s inclusion of black heroes in his Marvel Comics series in the 1960s. In 1963, Gabe Jones debuted as a black member of Nick Fury’s Howling Commandos in Sgt. Fury #1. But the one that really broke down barriers was the Black Panther, first appearing in Fantastic Four #52 (1966).”

It’s odd. After Kirby’s tumultuous departure from Marvel c 1970, one might think that DC would be inclined to let the King do what he would like. That would be an erroneous assumption. As Evanier noted: “We’re talking here about Jack Kirby, the man whose rejects were more interesting than what most creators got accepted.”

You may order the book Dingbat Love, a 176-page FULL-COLOR HARDCOVER, from your local comic book store – I hope – or through Two Morrows. They’re the same folks who put out Kirby & Lee: Stuf’ Said!

Movie review: 1917 (Mendes)

My first film at the new Madison Theatre

The movie 1917 was the first film my wife and I saw at the newly refurbished Madison Theatre. It’s only three blocks from our house. We walked there on a rainy Saturday afternoon in January.

When we entered the room, there were some animated short films already running. One was the 2015 offering Ear Fear. They were followed by previews of three movies, including The Turning, which was playing on another of the Madison’s four screens.

In April 1917, two British soldiers – Dean-Charles Chapman as Blake and George MacKay as Schofield – are “sent to deliver an urgent message to an isolated regiment. If the message is not received in time, the regiment will walk into a trap and be massacred.” Blake has a brother at that imperiled regiment.

As one spoiler-laced review notes, “When done well, [the long take] immerses the audience in the scene. If the action is literally unfolding all around the camera, it’s easy to convince viewers that they, too, are in the thick of it. It’s a gimmick, to be sure, but Mendes and cinematographer Roger Deakins make it work for 1917.”

I agree with that assessment. It may have the best chance of the nine films nominated for Best Picture to take home the Oscar. Yet about 10% of the critics on Rotten Tomatoes gave it a thumbs down.

Sentimentality?

What’s the general complaint? Often that the film is style over substance. Richard Brody’s review in the New Yorker is informative.

“The character’s death would have been as wrenching for viewers if the soldier’s appearance remained unaltered and he merely fell limp. Instead, the director, Sam Mendes, chose to render the moment picturesque—to adorn it with an anecdotal detail of the sort that might have cropped up in a war story, a tale told at years’ remove…”

I suppose there is something to this criticism. Interestingly, Mendes gives credit to his grandfather for telling these stories. Yet it is the sentimentality that makes the penultimate scene feel so touching.

“‘1917’ is a film of patriotic bombast and heroic duty, The script is filled with melodramatic coincidences that grossly trivialize the life-and-death action by reducing it to sentiment.” There are coincidences, to be sure. They did not take away from our appreciation of the film. But 1917, in the end, was less gruesome than those horror film trailers.

The Madison Theatre has table service. I was wary that this would be distracting, but it was not, in large part because the seats and tables alternate.

Even the waitstaff aiding people to our right was not that distracting. It’s hardly as bad as the chuckleheads talking in front of us when we saw Richard Jewell at the Spectrum about a month earlier.

A Tribute to Sister Rosa Parks

New exhibit at the Library of Congress

I’m talking a wild guess you might have heard about Rosa Parks, who was born February 4, 1913 in Tuskegee, AL and died October 24, 2005 in Detroit, MI.

The Wikipedia says, “Rosa Louise McCauley Parks was an American activist in the civil rights movement best known for her pivotal role in the Montgomery bus boycott. The United States Congress has called her ‘the first lady of civil rights’ and ‘the mother of the freedom movement.'”

But I saw a story this past December about a NEW Rosa Parks exhibit at the Library of Congress. It contains a treasure trove of her letters. Some are written on backs on food labels. I hope to see it; the exhibit runs through September 2020. At about the same time, a new Rosa Parks statue was unveiled in Montgomery, AL.

The King Institute website has a lot of important information about her. Among the featured documents that have been chosen from the King Papers collection:

Arrest Report for Claudette Colvin. City of Montgomery Police Department. March 02, 1955. Who is she? She was a precursor to Rosa, as I noted a decade ago. Fred Gray, Alabama civil rights attorney said, “Claudette gave all of us moral courage. If she had not done what she did, I am not sure that we would have been able to mount the support for Mrs. Parks.”

Arrest Record For Rosa Parks. City of Montgomery Police Department. December 01, 1955.

Announcement, Another Negro Woman has been Arrested — Don’t Ride the Bus. Robinson, Jo Ann Gibson (Women’s Political Council (WPC)), December 02, 1955. “Don’t Ride the Bus”. Robinson, Jo Ann Gibson (Women’s Political Council (WPC)), December 02, 1955.

“Resolution” – Montgomery Improvement Association. December 08, 1955.

Music

There’s an album that came out some years ago, with snippets of dialogue from Rosa Parks between music tracks. This is my favorite song: Help Us Lord – The Chosen.

Here’s a track from the mighty Neville Brothers, Sister Rosa.