Ask Mr. Music by Jerry Osborne

FOR THE WEEK OF AUGUST 30, 2010


DEAR JERRY: Why is “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” not heard anywhere in the film of the same title? The song clearly tells the same western story as the movie script, and should be the theme. What happened?

Not even the all-knowing Internet Movie Data Base mentions this most unusual situation, so anything you can tell me will be appreciated.

Also, what was determined to be the cause of Gene's sudden death?
—Cheryl Gifford, Vincennes, Ind.

DEAR CHERYL: Gene Pitney (February 17, 1940 - April 5, 2006) was found dead in his hotel room in Cardiff, Wales. His body was discovered by his tour manager, who went to check on Gene when he didn't answer his phone. Pitney was at the time in the midst of a very successful UK tour.

An autopsy confirmed the cause of death to be heart disease, more specifically ASVD (arteriosclerotic vascular disease) reflecting enlarged artery walls due to excessive fatty matter.

A few years earlier, in an e-mail we received, Gene admitted even he didn't know the exact reason his theme song never made it into the film:

“Because of my prior success with “Town Without Pity,” I was paid a bundle to record “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.” Burt Bacharach wrote the song with Hal David, and Burt produced it.

“However, there was some screw-up between the publishing company, Famous Music, and the parent company, Paramount Pictures, and that is why it never was in the actual film.

“The most bizarre part of the story is something I only found out a few years ago, which is that the actual music, the main theme, used in the film is from a 1939 Henry Fonda film titled “Young Mister Lincoln.” Go figure that out!

“Regards, Gene Pitney”


DEAR JERRY: One of my favorite genres of collecting is recordings made by celebrities more famous for something other than music.

I have records by actors; sports stars; politicians; and even criminals.

Years ago I read about an album by David Jansen, the actor in “The Fugitive” TV show.

Having never laid eyes on such an LP, it would help if I knew the title, label, and any other details you can provide.

I don't even know if he sings or just plays an instrument.
—Rocky Fresnell, Seattle, Wash.

DEAR ROCKY: David Janssen (note correct spelling), with the Tradewinds Orchestra and Chorus, recorded one album for Epic, titled “The Hidden Island (A Compelling Story of Love's Secret Moments and Tender Emotions).” This 1965 issue came in both mono (LN-24150) and stereo (BN-26150).

David neither sings nor plays; however, he narrates these stories.

Janssen is also the narrator on a Bicentennial (1976) production made exclusively for the National Guard: “Voices of Freedom (The Story of America's Citizen Soldier in the National Guard)” (NG-1000).

Accompanying David on these tracks is The United States Air Force Symphony in Blue and the Singing Sergeants.

IZ ZAT SO? Though David Janssen didn't make the charts with his Epic album, quite a few celebrities from other fields do have hit records to their credit.

Here is an alphabetical sampling of familiar names in this category: Rex Allen; Annette; Ann-Margret; Jim Backus; Barbie Benton; Walter Brennan; George Burns; Edd Byrnes; Cassius Clay; Johnny Crawford; Dennis Day; Mike Douglas; Shelley Fabares; Stan Freberg; Jackie Gleason; Bill Hayes; Wink Martindale; Robert Mitchum; Leonard Nimoy; Ken Nordine; Paul Petersen; Red Skelton; John Tesh; John Travolta; and John Wayne.

Though he didn't make the charts, the Master of Suspense, Alfred Hitchcock, recorded an entertaining collection of, in his words, “mood music in a jugular vein.” The title of this 1958 LP is “Music to Be Murdered By” (Imperial 9052).

The lush orchestrations of standards are provided by Jeff Alexander and His Orchestra, but Hitchcock introduces each of the 10 tracks with some humorous commentary.

My favorite of these Hitchcockian quips precedes “I'll Never Smile Again”:

“It was inevitable that I would make a record. After all, my measurements are 33 1/3, 45 and 78.”

Jerry Osborne answers as many questions as possible through this column. Write Jerry at: Box 255, Port Townsend, WA 98368

E-mail: jpo@olympus.net  

Visit his Web site: http://www.jerryosborne.com/

All values quoted in this column are for near-mint condition.

Copyright 2010 Osborne Enterprises- Reprinted By Permission

The Record: Contemporary Art and Vinyl

September 2, 2010 - February 6, 2011
Preview Week: August 26 - September 1, 2010

The Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University presents a groundbreaking exhibition that explores the culture of vinyl records through 50 years of contemporary art.

The Record: Contemporary Art and Vinyl features work by 41 artists from around the world, from the 1960s to the present, who use vinyl records as subject or medium. The exhibition includes sound work, sculpture, installation, drawing, painting, photography, video and performance.

The Record includes rising stars in the contemporary art world (William Cordova, Robin Rhode, Dario Robleto), outsider artists (Mingering Mike), well-established artists (Jasper Johns, Ed Ruscha, Carrie Mae Weems) and artists whose work will be shown in a U.S. museum for the first time (Kevin Ei-ichi deForest, Jeroen Diepenmaat, Taiyo Kimura, Lyota Yagi).

Since the heyday of vinyl, and through its decline and recent resurgence, a surprising number of artists have worked with vinyl records. The Record presents some of the best, rarest and most unexpected examples. The artists in the exhibition use the vinyl record as metaphor, archive, artifact, icon, portrait, or transcendent medium.
- Trevor Schoonmaker, curator of contemporary art at the Nasher Museum

The exhibition includes a broad range of works, such as a hybrid violin and record player, Viophonograph, a seminal work by Laurie Anderson; David Byrne's original life-sized Polaroid photomontage used for the cover of the 1978 Talking Heads album More Songs About Buildings and Food; a monumental column of vinyl records by Cordova; and an important early work by Robleto, who transformed Billie Holiday records in an alchemic process to create hand-painted buttons. Works by Christian Marclay, who has made art with records for 30 years, include his early and rarely seen Recycled Records as well as his most recent record video, Looking for Love.

The Nasher Museum commissioned two works for The Record. Berlin-based artist Satch Hoyt created a 16-foot canoe made of red 45-rpm records with an original soundscape during a 2009 artist residency at Duke. New York artist Xaviera Simmons created photographs of the North Carolina landscape and solicited musical responses from musicians such as Mac McCaughan of Superchunk, Tunde Adebimpe of TV on the Radio and Jim James of My Morning Jacket. The original songs will be pressed onto a 12-inch record and played with her installation.

Artists
Artists in the exhibition include Laurie Anderson (1947 USA), Felipe Barbosa (1978 Brazil), David Byrne (1952 Scotland), Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller (1957 & 1960 Canada)*, William Cordova (1971 Peru), Moyra Davey (1958 Canada), Kevin Ei-ichi deForest (1962 Canada), Jeroen Diepenmaat (1978 Netherlands), Sean Duffy (1966 USA), Yukio Fujimoto (1950 Japan), Jack Goldstein (1945 Canada), Rodney Graham (1949 Canada)*, Harrison Haynes (1973 USA)*, Gregor Hildebrandt (1974 Germany), Satch Hoyt (1957 UK), Jasper Johns (1930 USA), Taiyo Kimura (1970 Japan), Tim Lee (1975 Korea), Ralph Lemon (1952 USA), Christian Marclay (1955 USA), David McConnell (1975 USA), Mingering Mike (1950 USA), Dave Muller (1964 USA), Ujino Muneteru (1964 Japan), Vik Muniz and Carlos da Silva Assunção Filho aka Cafi (1961 & 1950 Brazil)*, Patrick Douthit aka 9th Wonder (1975 USA)*, DJ Rekha (1971 UK)*, Robin Rhode (1976 South Africa), Dario Robleto (1972 USA), Ed Ruscha (1937 USA), Malick Sidibé (1935 Mali), Xaviera Simmons (1974 USA), Mark Soo (1977 Singapore), Meredyth Sparks (1972 USA), Su-Mei Tse (1973 Luxembourg), Fatimah Tuggar (1967 Nigeria), Alice Wagner (1974 Peru), Carrie Mae Weems (1953 USA), and Lyota Yagi (1980 Japan).
* "Cover to Cover" crate curator list

The accompanying Cover to Cover installation features 10 artists and musicians who each curated a crate of 20 albums that tell a story through the cover visuals. Visitors will peruse the crates and with headphones listen to records on record players.

Catalogue

The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated 216-page color catalogue distributed by Duke University Press and available at the Nasher Museum Store ($45, paperback). It includes an introduction by curator Trevor Schoonmaker, statements by each artist in the exhibition and essays that balance personal reflection with critical exploration and scholarly analysis. Contributors include:

Jeff Chang - whose first book, Can't Stop Won't Stop (2005) won the American Book Award, the ASCAP Deems Taylor Award, and the Association for Recorded Sound Collections Award for Excellence in Historical Recorded Sound Research. He edited Total Chaos: The Art and Aesthetics of Hip-Hop (2007) and was named a 2008 USA Ford Fellow in Literature.

Vivien Goldman - a widely published journalist for publications including the New York Times. The most recent of her five books is The Book of Exodus: the Making and Meaning of Bob Marley and the Wailers' Album of the Century (2006). She is the adjunct professor of punk and reggae at New York University. Her work as a post-punk singer-songwriter is frequently reissued.

Jennifer Kabat - a design writer and critic. Her journalism has appeared in the Financial Times, Wired, Wallpaper, The Guardian, Condé Nast Traveler, and New York magazine.

Josh Kun - author of Audiotopia: Music, Race, and America (2005) and coauthor of And You Shall Know Us by the Trail of Our Vinyl: The Jewish Past as Told by the Records We Have Loved and Lost (2008). He is a professor in the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California and a founding member of the Idelsohn Society for Musical Preservation.

Barbara London - a curator of media and the founder of the video-exhibition and collection programs at The Museum of Modern Art. She has organized more than 120 exhibitions, including one-person shows featuring Nam June Paik, Bill Viola, Joan Jonas, and Laurie Anderson, and thematic projects such as New Video from China; Anime!; Automatic Update, and Looking at Music: Side 2.

Mac McCaughan - a founding member of the rock band Superchunk and cofounder of Merge Records, based in Durham, N.C. He also records and performs under the name Portastatic.

Carlo McCormick - senior editor of Paper magazine and a popular-culture critic/curator. He lives and works in New York.

Charles McGovern - who teaches American studies and history at the College of William and Mary. He is the author of Sold American: Consumption and Citizenship, 1890—1945 (2006), and with Susan Strasser and Mattias Judt coedited Getting and Spending: European and American Consumer Societies in the Twentieth Century (1998). He is at work on a book tracing the histories of race and citizenship in American popular music. He is a former curator at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, where he wrote, curated exhibitions, and built extensive recording collections, all on the history of jazz, blues, gospel, country, rock and soul.

Mark Anthony Neal - author of four books: New Black Man: Rethinking Black Masculinity (2005), Songs in the Keys of Black Life: A Rhythm and Blues Nation (2003), Soul Babies: Black Popular Culture and the Post-Soul Aesthetic (2002), and What the Music Said: Black Popular Music and Black Public Culture (1998). Neal is also the coeditor (with Murray Forman) of That's the Joint!: The Hip-Hop Studies Reader (2004). Neal is a professor of black popular culture in the Department of African and African American Studies at Duke University. A frequent commentator for National Public Radio, Neal also contributes to several online media outlets, including SeeingBlack.com, The Root.com, and theGrio.com.

Piotr Orlov - a Brooklyn-based critic, curator, and events producer. He co-organized the music program for the exhibition, Black President: The Art and Legacy of Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, has written about house and African techno for the New York Times, and throws a monthly dance-party called Treehouse. By day, Orlov is a creative writer for Mother Industries.

Luc Sante - whose books include Folk Photography (2009), Kill All Your Darlings (2007), The Factory of Facts (1998), Evidence (1992), and Low Life (1991). He teaches writing and the history of photography at Bard College.

Dave Tompkins - whose first book How to Wreck a Nice Beach: The Vocoder, from World War II to Hip Hop (2010) is out on Stop Smiling Books/Melville House. He is from North Carolina.

Curator
Trevor Schoonmaker, Patsy R. and Raymond D. Nasher Curator of Contemporary Art at the Nasher Museum, organized the exhibition. His previous exhibitions at the Nasher Museum include Barkley L. Hendricks: Birth of the Cool (2008-10) and Street Level: Mark Bradford, William Cordova and Robin Rhode (2007-08). Prior to joining the Nasher Museum his exhibitions included The Beautiful Game: Contemporary Art and Fútbol (2006), DTroit (2003-04), and Black President: The Art and Legacy of Fela Anikulapo-Kuti (2003-05). He edited the book Fela: From West Africa to West Broadway.

Thank You
The Record: Contemporary Art and Vinyl is made possible by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Major support is provided by Marilyn M. Arthur, the Mary Duke Biddle Foundation, Duke University's Council for the Arts, the N.C. Arts Council, a division of the Department of Cultural Resources, Charles Weinraub and Emily Kass, E. Blake Byrne, Barbra and Andrew Rothschild, Christen and Derek Wilson, and the Graduate Liberal Studies program at Duke University. This program is supported in part, by public funds from the Netherlands Cultural Services. Additional support is provided by Dr. and Mrs. Robert F. Allen, Catherine Karmel, Peggy and John Murray, Francine and Benson Pilloff, Caroline and Arthur Rogers, Olympia Stone and Sims Preston, Angela O. Terry, Richard Tigner, Nancy Palmer Wardropper, Peter Lange and Lori Leachman, Lauren and Neill Goslin and Merge Records.

Closer to his heart

Transconian in a mad Rush to get his hands on anything, everything from Toronto prog legends

By: David Sanderson / Collectibles

AFTER 42 years, 39 gold and/or platinum albums, and a bulging catalogue of songs about trees and kings and temples ("...of Syrinx!"), Canadian power trio Rush is sud­denly the rock-and-roll flavour of the month.

Perhaps we should have heard this coming.

Last summer, the Toronto group -- composed of Lee, Alex Lifeson and Neil Peart -- figured prominently in the Paul Rudd comedy I Love You, Man. (Nutshell: Rudd's buddy-less character is getting married, and needs to find a best man, pronto. Enter Sydney (Jason Segal), a layabout who spends an inordinate amount of time in his "man-cave" riffing on Tom Sawyer, etc.)

Exhibit B: At this year's Tribeca Film Festival, the documentary Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage played to packed houses, and won that fest's 2010 Heineken Audience Award. In the highly acclaimed movie, critics' darlings like Smashing Pumpkins' Billy Corgan and Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor heap praise on oft-reviled Rush, citing the band as a major influence in their own musical journeys.

And next month, when the latest edition of Guitar Hero is released, Rush's 1976 album, 2112, will be featured in its entirety -- including the seven-part, 20-minute, 33-second title track.

Which leads us to our first question: When Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock hits store shelves on Sept. 28, should we expect to find Corey Labossiere -- a local collector of all things-Rush -- at the front of the line?

"I want to say yes, but I don't own any game systems," Labossiere says.

Details, details.

Collector Corey Labossiere has the spirit of Rush.

After all, when Labossiere, 18, first brought home an armful of Rush titles from Rockin' Richard's Record Show, the Red River Co-op employee had to wait a while before he was able to slap on his headphones and enjoy them.

"I picked up a bunch of vinyl, even though I didn't have a turntable yet," he says, smiling sheepishly.

These days, Labossiere has all that and more. "More" being a wing in his parents' home devoted entirely to the Canadian Music Hall of Famers. There, tucked in among the requisite LPs, CDs, and DVDs, is Labossiere's assortment of Rush playing cards, light switch covers, and -- who says Rush stinks? -- incense sticks. "I have no idea why I even bought these," Labossiere says, showing a visitor his 20-stick pack. "It's not like I'm ever going to burn them."

In truth, Labossiere is a bit of a Geddy-come-lately. He only twigged into Rush two years ago -- just prior to the band's concert at the MTS Centre on May 24, 2008.

"I had a working knowledge of them, obviously, from listening to the radio through the years. But before getting a ticket to the show, I decided to do some more research, and basically just fell in love with them," says Labossiere, who plays bass in a throw-together band based in Transcona. "What I discovered is that they're just amazing; they can play every genre of music and more importantly, one album doesn't sound the same as the next, which was really refreshing." (Hello, AC/DC.)

While nobody thinks twice about the amount of kitsch generated by acts like the Beatles or Elvis, it is a bit surprising to discover that Rush fans can also purchase ashtrays, key chains and bobble heads bearing their heroes' likenesses. "I do go on eBay from time to time, but most of the stuff there that's worth buying is ridiculously priced. It's not uncommon for some stuff -- especially if it's autographed -- to go for thousands of dollars," Labossiere says.

Labossiere (fave song: The Spirit of Radio) recently took out an ad on Kijiji, asking Winnipeggers if they had any Rush memorabilia they'd be willing to part with -- things like vintage T-shirts, old ticket stubs or concert programs. Heck, Labossiere would even be happy with a Dogs Playing Poker painting, like the one depicted on the jacket of the Moving Pictures album.

"I'd also like to get a television like the one you see on the cover of Power Windows. It's called a Predicta and was made in the 1950s, but the only one I've ever seen in person was in a museum."

Labossiere may be the biggest Rush fan in Winnipeg, but Scotland's Jim Wright is arguably the band's No. 1 supporter worldwide. Wright's website (www.resistmusic.com) lists his exhaustive collection of Rush memorabilia, including hundreds of albums, singles and CDs. (You think you like the song New World Man? Wright owns dozens of copies, including rare pressings from Australia, Holland and Spain.)

"I can remember exactly when I started to collect Rush items," says Wright, 46, from his home in Paisley. "I was in Glasgow city centre in Virgin Megastore in 1981, going through the Rush section. I noticed a Japanese import copy of Exit Stage Left and was immediately fascinated with the Obi Strip, and lyrics in both English and Japanese with a much thicker cardboard cover than the U.K. issue. Then I started collecting in earnest."

Wright sells and trades with people from all over the word, but he has a soft spot for items from Rush's homeland. "I definitely have a preference for Canadian items. The majority of Rush fans believe that their first independent Canadian releases -- the Rush LP and the Not Fade Away 45 on the Moon label -- are the rarest items, but some promotional CDs and test vinyl from Canada are a lot rarer."

In 2007, Wright fulfilled a decades-long dream when he flew to North America to see Rush perform in its own backyard. "A friend came with me, and we caught them in Toronto at Air Canada Centre, where they had just sold out two nights," Wright says.

And what did people back home think of his adventure? "Actually, I was more amazed by the amount of local people in Toronto who had never heard of Rush." (See: "world's most popular cult band.")


RUSH HOUR

Here's a list of the top 10 Rush songs of all time, according to the website http://www.the-top-tens.com/

1. Tom Sawyer (from the album Moving Pictures)
2. YYZ (Moving Pictures)
3. 2112 (2112)
4. The Spirit of Radio (Permanent Waves)
5. Limelight (Moving Pictures)
6. Subdivisions (Signals)
7. La Villa Strangiato (Hemispheres)
8. Closer to the Heart (A Farewell to Kings)
9. Xanadu (A Farewell to Kings)
10. Working Man (Rush)

SOURCE:  http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/  Reprinted By Permission

We Love Our Records!

An old YouTube video, yes vinyl is old (and funny)!