Giants on tonight's Friday night music thread -- 40 minutes of perfect: Lester Young with Billie Holiday, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Dizzy Gillespie, Marie Bryant singing "Sunny Side of the Street" (and who is also seen dancing with Archie Savage), Illinois Jacquet, trumpeter Harry Edison, guitarist Barney Kessel, pianist Marlowe Morris, bassists Red Callender and John Simmons, drummers Sidney Catlett and Jo Jones.
As director, Mili imposed on the film an abstract visual style using completely empty backgrounds of sheer white or black, a mobile camera, and freely imaginative lighting schemes that somehow respected the humanity of his subjects. The cinematography was entrusted to Robert Burks, who would later shoot most of Alfred Hitchcock's films from Strangers on a Train (1951) through Marnie (1964).
It's Friday night, shruggers, time for our weekly chill (on the rocks with a twist). Tonight's little gem is "After you've gone" .... Lionel Hampton. I adore the slow, soft, moaning Hampton vocal before the band switches into high gear and Ziggy Elman takes off on the trumpet with Cozy Cole on drums.
-- Minor Swing. Beautiful, inventive. Check out Grappelli's shredding on his violin in this piece. Ok, everybody up and dance now, even if just with your spirit fingers. :)
So wrong on a Friday night open thread with the greatest country singer ever, Patsy Cline. Patsy, Patsy, Patsy. Pure vocal emotion. This one is for those of you who have ever been wrong and didn't get it back.
Tonight, let's do something off the beaten path for our Friday night open thread. It's the weekend before Passover begins, and I thought the theme from Schindler's List
performed by the 20th century's preeminent violinist, Itzhak Perlman,
would strike the right note. The somewhat compromised footage is Passover 1947 Vienna footage.
To all of my Atlas Shruggers, a zissen pesach. I am heading south to join my family for the first and second seders. My family, my nachas (joy).
Le maestro on a Friday night open thread, Charles Aznavour joue et chante "La Boheme."
Aznavour, a French Jew, is a personal favorite of mine. He gives that ugly immoral country a soul. He reaches into my soul and kills me. The best album. Makes me crazy: 40 Chansons D'Or -- get it.
UPDATE: Correction: Aznavour's daughter and grandson are Jewish. He is not.
His family survived the Armenian genocide at the hands of Turk Muslims.
And now for something a little different for our Friday night open music thread. Tchaikovsky Flashwaltz at Hadassah Hospital -- I. just. love. these. people.
Very hard to watch the whole thing without tearing up. Thank you, Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance.
Is it any wonder that the evil and the soulless of the world despise them? The hatred of the good for being the good.
We lost Andrew a year ago today. Tonight's Friday night open music thread is dedicated to the big man. This was one of his favorite bands (mine too), The Cure, Lovesong.
Needless to say, his absence is most keenly felt. We have not recovered ......... on so many levels.
It's Friday night, and you know what that means. Chillin' with da shruggers. Tonight's selection is divine. An evening with America's greatest jazz composer, Duke Ellington. This 1952 recording includes 2 performances of Duke and his Orchestra, one on Jan. 7, 1952 and one on Aug. 12, 1952. 12 of his signature pieces are featured, including Sophisticated Lady, Caravan, The Mooch, VP's Boogie, Solitude, Mood Indigo, The Hawk Talks, I Got It Bad And It Ain't Good, Bli-Blip, Flamingo, Cottontail and C Jam Blues (Hot Chocolate).
UPDATE: Robert Spencer is writing a fabulous new column for PJ Lifestyle about a subject, an art, very close to the soul, America's truest and purest art form: jazz music -- and, of course, there's an Islamic connection as well.
Ultimately, the war between the forces of jihad and the free world is
a conflict between individualism and collectivism. Nothing shows that
more vividly than each side’s attitude toward music.
“I cannot listen much to music,” Lenin once said. “It excites my
nerves. I feel like talking nonsense and caressing people who, living in
such a filthy hell, can create such beauty. Because today one must not
caress anyone; they will bite off your hand. One must break heads,
pitilessly break heads, even if, ideally, we are opposed to all
violence.”
Another totalitarian man of peace, Muhammad, is quoted as saying:
“Allah Mighty and Majestic sent me as a guidance and mercy to believers
and commanded me to do away with musical instruments, flutes, strings,
crucifixes, and the affair of the pre-Islamic period of ignorance.”
Musical instruments, flutes, strings, and crucifixes! This command
came with a warning: Muhammad is also supposed to have said that “on the
Day of Resurrection, Allah will pour molten lead into the ears of
whoever sits listening to a songstress,” for “song makes hypocrisy grow
in the heart as water does herbage.” He warned that the Muslim community
would one day experience times of tribulation, featuring “the
swallowing up of some people by the earth, metamorphosis of some into
animals, and being rained upon with stones.”
When his followers asked him when this would be, he answered: “When
songstresses and musical instruments appear and wine is held to be
lawful.” There would come a dark day, he said, when even some Muslims
would “hold fornication, silk, wine, and musical instruments to be
lawful.” (‘Umdat al-Salik r40.0)
It isn’t hard to see why the creators of martial polities and new,
aggressively expansionistic political and societal systems such as Lenin
and Muhammad would disdain music. For music is an expression of the
human spirit – the very thing that these totalitarians were trying to
master. And no music so fully expresses the anti-totalitarian impulse,
and the dignity and value of every human person, than does jazz.
For jazz is not jazz if it doesn’t contain a considerable element of
improvisation, and improvisation is an expression of the individual soul
par excellence. A musician who is improvising has nothing to
fall back on except his own inner reservoir, and that is why jazz at its
best is so immediate, so personal, and so affecting. Miles Davis and
John Coltrane improvising on the same piece couldn’t sound more
different from one another, not just because one plays trumpet and the
other tenor sax, but because they are so very different from one another
as human beings, and in their improvisations, one can hear into their
very hearts and souls. One may learn their solos note-for-note (as I did
back in the pre-9/11 days when I played a bit of saxophone myself), but
this is just a musical exercise; the music itself can be copied but
never replicated, for their individual expression is inherent and
essential to it.
Totalitarian collectivists hate that individual expression. They are
only interested in the individual not for the expression of his own
soul, but as a cog to fit into his great machine that is marching toward
the worker’s paradise, or the Sharia state, or whatever the outcome of
their reign of terror is called today. As such, jazz music, a unique
product of the nation that has enabled a flowering of the individual
spirit unparalleled in human history, is a rebuke to collectivism, and a
defiant and joyful reassertion of the one thing that totalitarians fear
most: the individual.
It's coming down in NYC and I love it. Time to kick back and chill. Tonight's Friday night open thread features Snowfall, a song written by Claude Thornhill as the theme song for his orchestra. I couldn't resist such an obvious compliment to the weather and my mood.
Photos in the video are from three different editions of the Thornhill band. The
large one with the sculptured decor on the bandstand is the 1953 band at
the Roosevelt Hotel in New Orleans, with Bill Crow on bass, Winston
Welch on drums, Gene Quill on lead alto (thanks to Van).
My girl, she leaves shreds of her soul on every song. Billie Holiday singing All or Nothing at All.
Harry Edison, Trumpet; Ben Webster, Tenor Sax; Jimmy Rowles, Piano; Barney Kessel, Guitar; Red Mitchell (or Joe Mondragon), Bass; Alvin Stoller, Drums. Recorded in 1956.
Tonight we are chillin' with Etta James on the Friday night open thread. Because I. just. love. her. Completely there and great. She is an original who ranks with the greats whom I revere (Billie, Sarah, Dinah ...). Sit back, pour yourself a stiff one and get lost in her.
A special for the Atlas Friday night open thread. What a week, what a world ...... our prayers go out to the non-Muslim Westerners taken hostage by Muslim terrorists in Algeria.
Enjoy this hour with Nat .....here is his famous BBC TV special from 1963 "Summer by Nat King Cole" in HD resolution. All the greats are on this clip.
Open a bit of the bubbly, kick off your shoes and slow dance with the one you're with. Even if you're alone.
"You are a wonderful fighter for liberty" -- Bat Ye'or
"Well, I read Atlas Shrugs, Power Line, National Review blogs" ........ "Atlas Shrugs breaks more news than dozens of liberal blogs combined." ...... ... Ambassador John Bolton
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"Fearless, intelligent, beautiful --- Pamela Geller wears her Supergirl
costume well."
"Pamela Geller is a dynamo of energy and
a paragon of courage and fearlessness.
--Robert Spencer, JihadWatch in his book Stealth Jihad
"You do great work. You are a hero". -- Geert Wilders, Dutch MP
"You are my hero!" -- Wafa Sultan, Former Muslim, Author human rights activist
"Hot female host with a good sense of humor based in NYC? I nominate Pamela."-- Michelle Malkin
"An American and Jewish national treasure." -- Steven Goldberg, National Vice Chair, ZOA
"A nationally recognized authority on the threat of radical Islam" -- Rep. Steven King (R-IA)
Pamela is one of the nation's most vigorous opponents of bigoted violence.- John Hinderaker, Powerline
" "A beautiful and articulate speaker and writer who has risen to prominence in the US for her steadfast commitment to exposing the deadly pathologies of Jew hatred, misogyny and other prejudices inherent to jihadist ideology." -- Caroline Glick" -- Caroline Glick
"I honestly think that one day historians will write about the defense of Western values and virtues in the 21st Century and speak of heroes. And one will be Pamela Geller." Michael Coren, TV host, Sun TV
"I'm cheering you on!" -- Amanda Carpenter
"Great site," Dick Morris
"A brash New Yorker and an irrepressible firebrand" -- Robert Tracinski, The Freedom Fighter's Journal and The Intellectual Activist
"Indeed, some of Israel's best friends and most articulate defenders can be found in the blogosphere .... Atlas Shrugs, [et al] all provide a refreshing alternative to the moral relativism and politically correct anti-Israel blather of the media. Michael Freund, Jerusalem Post
"She does more in one week than most of us do in a frickin' lifetime -- Pamela Geller!" -- Jaz McKay, Talk Radio KNZR
"Influential online fanatic" --- Max Blumenthal, Writer, Al Jazeera and The Nation
"I never go to MSM for news. Atlas is where I go. I am amazed at all that is happening, that only Atlas readers know about"". --- JCL, Atlas reader
"The heroine of the right wing blogosphere. 'We’re all Pamela Geller now!'” -- Charles Johnson, mental patient
“Geller had joined Stop the Madrassa and blogged often about the matter on her website, Atlas Shrugs. Blessed with sultry Hollywood sex appeal and a sassy, scythe-like wit — a personable Ann Coulter and articulate Sarah Palin rolled into one — Geller would ride the Park51 project protest to superstardom.”
- Southern Poverty Law Center
"Pamela Geller is one of the most polarizing women in the country."
Village Voice
"Pamela Geller's writings, rallies and television appearances have both offended and inspired, transforming Ms. Geller from an Internet obscurity, who once videotaped herself in a bikini as she denounced “Islamofascism,” into a media commodity who has been profiled on “60 Minutes” and whose phraseology has been adopted by Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin." The New York Times
"Geller and Spencer are probably the most important propagandizing Islamophobes in the world, these people's voices speak very loudly — not just here in the United States but overseas." Heidi Beirich, director of the Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Project
"I would give the greatest sunset in the world for one sight of New York's skyline. Particularly when one can't see the details. Just the shapes. The shapes and the thought that made them. The sky over New York and the will of man made visible. What other religion do we need? And then people tell me about pilgrimages to some dank pesthole in a jungle where they go to do homage to a crumbling temple, to a leering stone monster with a pot belly, created by some leprous savage. Is it beauty and genius they want to see? Do they seek a sense of the sublime? Let them come to New York, stand on the shore of the Hudson, look and kneel. When I see the city from my window - no, I don't feel how small I am - but I feel that if a war came to threaten this, I would throw myself into space, over the city, and protect these buildings with my body." Ayn Rand
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, I'll be seeing you ...... Friday night blues. 
performed by the 20th century's preeminent violinist, 
-- get it.
"Misty" Live 1964.
