F. Scott Fitzgerald Creates a List of 22 Essential Books (1936)


In 1936 — per­haps the dark­est year of his life — F. Scott Fitzger­ald was con­va­lesc­ing in a hotel in Asheville, North Car­oli­na, when he offered his nurse a list of 22 books he thought were essen­tial read­ing. The list, above, is writ­ten in the nurse’s hand.

Fitzger­ald had moved into Asheville’s Grove Park Inn that April after trans­fer­ring his wife Zel­da, a psy­chi­atric patient, to near­by High­land Hos­pi­tal. It was the same month that Esquire pub­lished his essay “The Crack Up”, in which he con­fessed to a grow­ing aware­ness that “my life had been a draw­ing on resources that I did not pos­sess, that I had been mort­gag­ing myself phys­i­cal­ly and spir­i­tu­al­ly up to the hilt.”

Fitzger­ald’s finan­cial and drink­ing prob­lems had reached a crit­i­cal stage. That sum­mer he frac­tured his shoul­der while div­ing into the hotel swim­ming pool, and some­time lat­er, accord­ing to Michael Cody at the Uni­ver­si­ty of South Car­oli­na’s Fitzger­ald Web site, “he fired a revolver in a sui­cide threat, after which the hotel refused to let him stay with­out a nurse. He was attend­ed there­after by Dorothy Richard­son, whose chief duties were to pro­vide him com­pa­ny and try to keep him from drink­ing too much. In typ­i­cal Fitzger­ald fash­ion, he devel­oped a friend­ship with Miss Richard­son and attempt­ed to edu­cate her by pro­vid­ing her with a read­ing list.”

It’s a curi­ous list. Shake­speare is omit­ted. So is James Joyce. But Nor­man Dou­glas and Arnold Ben­nett make the cut. Fitzger­ald appears to have restrict­ed his selec­tions to books that were avail­able at that time in Mod­ern Library edi­tions. At the top of the page, Richard­son writes “These are books that Scott thought should be required read­ing.”

via The Uni­ver­si­ty of South Car­oli­na

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ernest Hem­ing­way Cre­ates a Read­ing List for a Young Writer, 1934

Sev­en Tips From F. Scott Fitzger­ald on How to Write Fic­tion

Rare Footage of Scott and Zel­da Fitzger­ald From the 1920s

Behold the New York City Street Tree Map: An Interactive Map That Catalogues the 700,000 Trees Shading the Streets of New York City

It may sound odd, but one of the things I miss most about liv­ing in New York City is the abil­i­ty to hop on a bus or train, or walk a few blocks from home, and end up loung­ing in a for­est, the cacoph­o­ny of traf­fic reduced to a dim hum, squir­rels bound­ing around, birds twit­ter­ing away above. Such urban respites are plen­ti­ful in NYC thanks to its 10,542 acres of forest­ed land, “about half as much as the Con­ga­ree Swamp in South Car­oli­na,” notes James Bar­ron at The New York Times, in one of the most dense­ly pop­u­lat­ed urban areas in the coun­try.

“Most of the city’s for­est is deep in parks”—in Cen­tral Park, of course, and also Prospect Park and River­side, and dozens of small­er oases, and the lush Botan­i­cal Gar­dens in the Bronx. The city’s forests are sub­ject to the usu­al pres­sures oth­er wood­ed areas face: cli­mate change, inva­sive species, etc.

They are also depen­dent on a well-fund­ed Parks Depart­ment and non­prof­its like the Nat­ur­al Areas Con­ser­van­cy for the preser­va­tion and upkeep not only of the large parks but of the trees that shade city streets in all five bor­oughs.

Luck­i­ly, the city and non­prof­it groups have been work­ing togeth­er to plan for what the conservancy’s senior ecol­o­gist, Helen For­gione, calls “future forests,” using big data to map out the best paths for urban wood­land. The NYC Parks depart­ment has been busy com­pil­ing fig­ures, and you can find all of their tree stats at the New York City Street Tree Map, which “brings New York City’s urban for­est to your fin­ger­tips. For the first time,” the Parks depart­ment writes, “you have access to infor­ma­tion about every street tree in New York City.”

Large forest­ed parks on the inter­ac­tive map appear as flat green fields—the depart­ment has not count­ed each indi­vid­ual tree in Cen­tral Park. But the map gives us fine, gran­u­lar detail when it comes to street trees, allow­ing users to zoom in to every inter­sec­tion and click on col­ored dots that rep­re­sent each tree, for exam­ple lin­ing Avenue D in the East Vil­lage or Flat­bush Avenue in Brook­lyn. You can search spe­cif­ic loca­tions or comb through city­wide sta­tis­tics for the big pic­ture. At the time of this writ­ing, the project has mapped 694,249 trees, much of that work under­tak­en by vol­un­teers in the TreesCount! 2015 ini­tia­tive.

There are many more trees yet to map, and the department’s forestry team updates the site dai­ly. Out of 234 species iden­ti­fied, the most com­mon is the Lon­don Plan­e­tree, rep­re­sent­ing 12% of the trees on the map. Oth­er pop­u­lar species include the Lit­tle­leaf Lin­den, Nor­way Maple, Pin Oak, and Ginko. Some oth­er stats show the eco­log­i­cal ben­e­fits of urban trees, includ­ing the amount of ener­gy con­served (667,590,884 kWh, or $84,279,933.06) and amount of car­bon diox­ide reduced (612,100 tons).

Vis­it the New York City Street Tree Map for the full, vir­tu­al tour of the city’s trees, and marvel—if you haven’t expe­ri­enced the city’s vibrant tree life firsthand—at just how green the empire city’s streets real­ly are.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

New York Pub­lic Library Puts 20,000 Hi-Res Maps Online & Makes Them Free to Down­load and Use

New York City: A Social His­to­ry (A Free Online Course from N.Y.U.) 

The Secret Lan­guage of Trees: A Charm­ing Ani­mat­ed Les­son Explains How Trees Share Infor­ma­tion with Each Oth­er

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

The Night When John Coltrane Soloed in a Bathroom and David Crosby, High as a Kite, Nearly Lost His Mind

David Cros­by is not only one of rock’s great song­writ­ers; he is also one of rock’s great raconteurs—always ready with a sto­ry, told as only he can tell it, about life in not just one, but two of the most influ­en­tial bands of the 1960s, the Byrds and Cros­by, Stills & Nash and some­times Young. Few peo­ple have lived a life as col­or­ful as his and lived to tell about it. Even few­er pos­sess Crosby’s wit and eye for detail.

He came by his wealth of anec­dotes at a sig­nif­i­cant cost, how­ev­er, to him­self and the peo­ple around him, as he read­i­ly admits in the new­ly released (on Blu-ray) Cameron Crowe-pro­duced doc­u­men­tary Remem­ber My Name. Now a wiz­ened 78-years-old and still pro­lif­ic and rais­ing hell (on Twit­ter, at least) Cros­by reached far back in the mem­o­ry vault to tell the tale of his life, from child­hood to his 60s hey­day to his stints in jail and rehab and through every sor­did stage of full blown addic­tion.

Drugs will seri­ous­ly mess up your life, says Cros­by, in no uncer­tain terms, but it’s also clear his life would have been much less event­ful, and less inter­est­ing, with­out them. Take the sto­ry he tells of run­ning into John Coltrane in the men’s room of the South Side Chica­go club called McKie’s in 1963. Incred­i­bly high, Cros­by finds him­self blown out of his seat and against the wall by Elvin Jones’ drum solo. He retreats to the bath­room and prompt­ly hits the floor. “I’ve got my head against this puke green tile,” he says in the clip above from Remem­ber My Name (see the trail­er below).

While Cros­by tried to pull him­self togeth­er, who should walk in but Coltrane, still play­ing:

He nev­er stopped solo­ing. He’s still solo­ing. And he’s like burn­ing in this bath­room. He doesn’t even know I’m there. He nev­er even saw me. I’m think­ing I’m gonna slide right down this tile. I’m think­ing my nose is gonna open and my brain is gonna rush out onto the floor. It was so intense. I nev­er heard any­one be more intense with music than that in my life.

Cros­by gets into more detail in an inter­view with Jaz­zTimes. Coltrane, he says, “played in the [restroom] for a cou­ple of min­utes because the sound was good—it was echoey—and he was… as good as you think he was.” He also talks at length about his long rela­tion­ship with jazz, from his dis­cov­ery of late-50s records by Dave Brubeck, Chet Bak­er, and Bill Evans, to Miles Davis record­ing a ver­sion of his song “Guin­n­e­vere.” (Davis was appar­ent­ly instru­men­tal in get­ting the Byrds signed to Colum­bia Records.)

The influ­ence of Davis and Coltrane on Crosby’s song­writ­ing is per­haps less evi­dent than in, say, the work of Joni Mitchell, but Cros­by admits that his “phras­ing and melody choice” derived from “real­ly good horn play­ers.” It’s inter­est­ing to note just how much impact late-50s/ear­ly 60s jazz had on not only Cros­by and Mitchell, but also 60s icons like Grace Slick. Lis­ten­ing to these clas­sic rock sur­vivors describe how Miles and Coltrane helped shape their sound shows just how much the mid-cen­tu­ry jazz rev­o­lu­tion fueled the rock rev­o­lu­tion that fol­lowed.

Now that he’s sober, Crosby’s sto­ries don’t involve near­ly as much floor tile and brains slid­ing out of noses, but they’re still full of jazz encoun­ters, includ­ing his recent col­lab­o­ra­tions with Wyn­ton Marsalis and jazz col­lec­tive Snarky Pup­py. Read more about his recent projects and his­to­ry with jazz over at Jaz­zTimes.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jazz Decon­struct­ed: What Makes John Coltrane’s “Giant Steps” So Ground­break­ing and Rad­i­cal?

How Grace Slick Wrote “White Rab­bit”: The 1960s Clas­sic Inspired by LSD, Lewis Car­roll, Miles Davis’ Sketch­es of Spain, and Hyp­o­crit­i­cal Par­ents

How Joni Mitchell Wrote “Wood­stock,” the Song that Defined the Leg­endary Music Fes­ti­val, Even Though She Wasn’t There (1969)

Kind of Blue: How Miles Davis Changed Jazz

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

Is Opera Part of Pop Culture? Pretty Much Pop #15 with Sean Spyres

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is PMP-Opera-as-Pop-400-x-800.jpg

Opera used to be a cen­tral part of Euro­pean pop cul­ture, Pavarot­ti was as big a pop star as they come. But still, it’s now the quin­tes­sen­tial art-form of the wealthy and snob­bish. What gives?

Guest Sean Spyres from Spring­field Region­al Opera joins his sis­ter Eri­ca along with Mark and Bri­an to dis­cuss oper­a’s place in cul­ture (includ­ing its film appear­ances), how it’s dif­fer­ent from music the­ater, the chal­lenges it faces and how it might become more rel­e­vant.

Some arti­cles:

Watch the Shaw­shank Redemp­tion opera scene or per­haps the Pret­ty Woman scene. What Is pop opera? Here’s Ranker’s list of artists. Paul Potts sings that famous song on Britain’s Got Tal­ent. Plus, check out albums from broth­er Michael Spyres. Yes, you can hear an opera-singer sing “Take Me Out to the Ball­game,” but you prob­a­bly should­n’t.

This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can only hear by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts or start with the first episode.

Found: A Long Lost Chapter from the World’s Oldest Novel, the 11th-Century Japanese Classic, The Tale of Genji

Hen­ry James’ dis­par­age­ment of Vic­to­ri­an nov­els has always struck me as odd. “What do such large loose bag­gy mon­sters,” as he called them, “with their queer ele­ments of the acci­den­tal and the arbi­trary, artis­ti­cal­ly mean?” The ques­tion might be asked of what has often been con­sid­ered the first mod­ern nov­el, Miguel de Cer­vantes’ Don Quixote, a trag­ic-com­ic adven­ture whose first vol­ume ranges over 52 loose, episod­ic chap­ters and whose sec­ond appeared ten years lat­er to com­ment explic­it­ly on the first’s suc­cess.

And then, six-hun­dred years ear­li­er, there appeared what many con­sid­er to be the first nov­el ever writ­ten, The Tale of Gen­ji, which “cov­ers almost three quar­ters of a cen­tu­ry,” notes trans­la­tor Edward Sei­den­stick­er in an intro­duc­tion to his 1976 edi­tion. “The first forty-one chap­ters have to do with the life and loves of the noble­man known as ‘the shin­ing Gen­ji,’” the son of an emper­or. We fol­low Gen­ji from birth to his 52nd year, then the final ten chap­ters relate the tale of Kaoru, “who pass­es in the world as Genji’s son but is real­ly the grand­son of his best friend.” (See a 12th-cen­tu­ry illus­tra­tion from the tale above.)

Writ­ten by a noble­woman and lady of the court in 11th cen­tu­ry Heian Japan, the book’s author is called Murasa­ki Shik­ibu, but her real name is unknown. Shik­ibu “des­ig­nates an office held by her father”; Murasa­ki prob­a­bly derives from the name of a main char­ac­ter in the nov­el. There is no “con­clu­sive evi­dence that the Gen­ji was either fin­ished or unfin­ished at the time, nor is there con­clu­sive evi­dence that it is fin­ished or unfin­ished today.” Some chap­ters have been thought spu­ri­ous, some deemed miss­ing. No orig­i­nal man­u­script exists, and only four of the novel’s 54 chap­ters have been authen­ti­cat­ed as tran­scrip­tions from the orig­i­nal text.

That is, until this month, when a “lost”—or pre­vi­ous­ly unknown—chapter sur­faced, and “is now the fifth con­firmed tran­scrip­tion of the his­tor­i­cal nov­el,” as Hakim Bishara writes at Hyper­al­ler­gic. “The new­ly dis­cov­ered chap­ter, titled ‘Waka­murasa­ki,’ depicts Genji’s encounter with Murasa­ki-no-ue, the young woman who lat­er becomes his wife.” It was dis­cov­ered by Moto­fuyu Okochi, The Japan Times reports, “a descen­dent of the for­mer feu­dal lord of the Mikawa-Yoshi­da Domain in Aichi Pre­fec­ture.”

The new Gen­ji mate­r­i­al appears “in one chap­ter of a five-chap­ter work called ‘Aobyoshi­bon’ (blue cov­er book), com­piled by poet Fuji­wara Tei­ka,” who is believed to have tran­scribed the old­est doc­u­ment­ed ver­sions of the nov­el dur­ing the Kamaku­ra Peri­od (1185–1333). There is as yet no crit­i­cal dis­cus­sion of how this find might change the way schol­ars read the book, but as a loose bag­gy mon­ster, it can expand and con­tract, change its shape and com­po­si­tion, with­out los­ing its essen­tial char­ac­ter.

As Sei­den­stick­er writes, “Murasa­ki Shik­ibu was no Aris­totelian, plan­ning her begin­ning, mid­dle, and end before she set brush to paper. The Gen­ji is full of hes­i­ta­tions and wrong turns and retreats.” Full, in oth­er words, of the mean­der­ings of the mind. (You can read Seidensticker’s trans­la­tion of the Gen­ji online here.) Anoth­er West­ern admir­er of the nov­el, Jorge Luis Borges, writ­ing of an ear­li­er trans­la­tion, put it anoth­er way: “What inter­ests us is not the exoticism—the hor­ri­ble word—but rather the human pas­sions… Murasaki’s work is what one would quite pre­cise­ly call a psy­cho­log­i­cal nov­el.”

via Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Splen­did Hand-Scroll Illus­tra­tions of The Tale of the Gen­jii, The First Nov­el Ever Writ­ten (Cir­ca 1120)

The Old­est Book Print­ed with Mov­able Type is Not The Guten­berg Bible: Jikji, a Col­lec­tion of Kore­an Bud­dhist Teach­ings, Pre­dat­ed It By 78 Years and It’s Now Dig­i­tized Online

Hand-Col­ored Pho­tographs of 19th Cen­tu­ry Japan

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

The First Faked Photograph (1840)

The pho­to­graph was invent­ed in the ear­ly 19th cen­tu­ry, but who invent­ed it? His­to­ries of pho­tog­ra­phy point to sev­er­al dif­fer­ent inde­pen­dent inven­tors, most of them French: Nicéphore Niépce, for exam­ple, who in 1826 made the first work rec­og­niz­able as a pho­to­graph, or more famous­ly Louis Daguerre, hon­ored for his inven­tion of the daguerreo­type pho­to­graph­ic process by the French Acad­e­my of Sci­ences and the Académie des Beaux Arts in 1839. But what about Daguer­re’s con­tem­po­rary Hip­poly­te Bayard, who had also been devel­op­ing and refin­ing his own form of pho­tog­ra­phy? After going unac­knowl­edged by the Acad­e­my, he had only one option left: sui­cide.

The Vox Dark­room video above tells the sto­ry of Bayard’s 1840 Self Por­trait as a Drowned Man, which depicts exact­ly what its title sug­gests: Bayard’s corpse, retrieved from the water and propped up unclaimed at the morgue. “The Gov­ern­ment which has been only too gen­er­ous to Mon­sieur Daguerre, has said it can do noth­ing for Mon­sieur Bayard, and the poor wretch has drowned him­self,” reads the note on the back of the pho­to­graph. “Oh the vagaries of human life.…!”

A sor­ry tale, to be sure, and of a kind not unknown in the his­to­ry of inven­tion. But wait: how could a dead man shoot a “self-por­trait”? And if indeed “no-one has rec­og­nized or claimed him,” as the note adds, who would have both­ered to write the note itself?

Bayard, still very much alive, made Self Por­trait as a Drowned Man as a kind of artis­tic stunt, the lat­est in a series of self-por­traits test­ing his pho­to­graph­ic process. The “morgue” shot con­tains some of the arti­facts in its pre­de­ces­sors, includ­ing a gar­den stat­ue, a flo­ral vase, and Bayard’s sig­na­ture broad straw hat. (Even the expres­sion of death was of a piece with his pre­vi­ous self-por­traits: the long expo­sure time meant he’d had to hold absolute­ly still with his eyes closed in all of them as well.) Until his death in 1887 — long after Daguerre had passed — Bayard con­tin­ued exper­i­ment­ing with pho­tog­ra­phy, cre­at­ing real­i­ty-depart­ing images includ­ing “dou­ble self por­traits.” If he could­n’t go down as the inven­tor of the pho­to­graph, at least he could go down as the inven­tor of the fake pho­to­graph — a still-rel­e­vant inven­tion, to say the least, giv­en our increas­ing­ly com­pli­cat­ed rela­tion­ship with the truth in the 21st cen­tu­ry.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The First Pho­to­graph Ever Tak­en (1826)

See the First Pho­to­graph of a Human Being: A Pho­to Tak­en by Louis Daguerre (1838)

See The First “Self­ie” In His­to­ry Tak­en by Robert Cor­nelius, a Philadel­phia Chemist, in 1839

Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Cre­ates Real­is­tic Pho­tos of Peo­ple, None of Whom Actu­al­ly Exist

Long Before Pho­to­shop, the Sovi­ets Mas­tered the Art of Eras­ing Peo­ple from Pho­tographs — and His­to­ry Too

The His­to­ry of Pho­tog­ra­phy in Five Ani­mat­ed Min­utes: From Cam­era Obscu­ra to Cam­era Phone

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

The Story of Ziggy Stardust Gets Chronicled in a New Graphic Novel, Featuring a Foreword by Neil Gaiman

Film has always been a medi­um that seeks to enter­tain as well as edi­fy, fram­ing thrills and chills for prof­it, and fram­ing com­po­si­tions deserv­ing of the label of “art.” Very often it has done both at the same time. Every casu­al stu­dent of the medi­um will, at least, admit this much. But nev­er have the dif­fer­ences between movie art and enter­tain­ment seemed as mag­ni­fied and polar­ized as they are now, in the midst of debates about com­ic book fran­chis­es and the fine art we call cin­e­ma.

What­ev­er the rea­sons, film has not reached the détente between art and enter­tain­ment achieved by pop­u­lar music—another medi­um depen­dent on late-19th/20th cen­tu­ry record­ing tech­nolo­gies and born of a thor­ough­ly mod­ern com­mer­cial matrix. Of course, not all pop aspires to art. But the idea that music can be huge­ly entertaining—drawing on the “low” gen­res of fan­ta­sy, sci­ence fic­tion, and com­ic books—and also wor­thy of cul­tur­al immor­tal­i­ty has become uncon­tro­ver­sial in large part because of the career of one musi­cian.

David Bowie, rock and roll’s orig­i­nal space alien super­hero, used his bank­able per­son­ae through the decades to give cre­dence to the idea of “art rock,” to real­ize its glam pos­si­bil­i­ties, to turn the rock auteur into an actor. He learned from a host of exper­i­menters, both his direct influ­ences and his spir­i­tu­al pre­de­ces­sors. And he inspired a legion of suc­ces­sors who weren’t afraid to play char­ac­ters in their work, to mix inter­ests in phi­los­o­phy, lit­er­a­ture, and the occult with the flam­boy­ant, campy styles of the comics. (A mix comics them­selves played with in both pop­u­lar and under­ground man­i­fes­ta­tions.)

Bowie embod­ied the future when he appeared on the scene as Zig­gy in 1972, after years of labor­ing in obscu­ri­ty and a few fleet­ing brush­es with fame. “The incar­na­tions of David Bowie were, in them­selves, sci­ence fic­tion­al, “writes Neil Gaiman in the for­ward to a new graph­ic nov­el, BOWIE: Star­dust, Ray­guns, & Moon­age Day­dreams, which tells the sto­ry of Bowie’s rise as Zig­gy. “All I was miss­ing was a Bowie com­ic,” says Gaiman of his own fan­dom. “And, miss­ing it, I would draw bad Bowie comics myself.” Zig­gy Star­dust espe­cial­ly called for such treat­ment.

Bowie wore the glam rock Mar­t­ian mask with such com­mit­ment no one doubt­ed that he meant it—only what, exact­ly, he meant by it. “He defied clas­si­fi­ca­tion,” notes Simon & Schus­ter, “with his psy­che­del­ic aes­thet­ics, his larg­er-than-life image, and his way of hov­er­ing on the bor­der of the sur­re­al.” Fit­ting­ly, the com­ic is drawn by an artist who real­ized a psy­che­del­ic, sur­re­al­ist cre­ative vision of Neil Gaiman’s: Michael Allred, who worked on the Sand­man series.

The sto­ry, “part biog­ra­phy and part imag­i­na­tion,” reports Rolling Stone, is writ­ten by Steve Hor­ton and col­ored by Lau­ra Allred. You can order a copy here.

via Rolling Stone

Relat­ed Con­tent:

96 Draw­ings of David Bowie by the “World’s Best Com­ic Artists”: Michel Gondry, Kate Beat­on & More

David Bowie Songs Reimag­ined as Pulp Fic­tion Book Cov­ers: Space Odd­i­ty, Heroes, Life on Mars & More

Fred­die Mer­cury Reimag­ined as Com­ic Book Heroes

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

Meet Viola Smith, the World’s Oldest Drummer: Her Career Started in the 1930s, and She Played Until She Was 107

Update: Vio­la Smith sad­ly passed away this past week. You can read her obit­u­ary at The Guardian.

She may be the most famous jazz drum­mer you’ve nev­er heard of.

Vio­la Smith played with the NBC Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra, per­formed for Har­ry Truman’s inau­gu­ra­tion in 1949, and played in the Kit-Kat Band (see them below on I’ve Got a Secret), in the first Broad­way run of Cabaret from 1966–70. These mark only a hand­ful of her career high­lights. She’s still thriving—and still playing—at the age of 106. While a fall has forced her to rely on a walk­er, she “looks like a sev­en­ty-five-year-old in ter­rif­ic shape!” writes Dan Bar­rett at The Syn­co­pat­ed Times.

Born Vio­la Schmitz in Mount Cal­vary, Wis­con­sin in 1912, Smith start­ed play­ing in the 1920s with her fam­i­ly band, the Schmitz Sis­ters Fam­i­ly Orches­tra (lat­er the Smith Sis­ters Orches­tra). Con­sist­ing of Vio­la, sev­en of her sis­ters, and one of her two broth­ers, they played the vaude­ville and movie the­ater cir­cuit on week­ends. Their father man­aged, direct­ed, and booked the band. An appear­ance on America’s Got Tal­ent, “the 1930s radio ver­sion,” notes Bar­rett, gave Vio­la and her sis­ters the con­fi­dence to form the Coquettes, who gar­nered a con­sid­er­able amount of fame after their debut in 1938.

In 1942, Vio­la wrote an arti­cle for Down Beat mag­a­zine titled “Give Girl Musi­cians a Break!,” sug­gest­ing that bands who lost musi­cians to WWII should hire women. Lat­er that year, when Mil­dred, Viola’s last remain­ing sis­ter in the Coquettes, got mar­ried, Vio­la moved to New York, “where I always want­ed to be,” she tells Bar­rett. She earned a sum­mer schol­ar­ship to Jul­liard, Ben­ny Good­man asked her to join his band (she turned him down), and she played with Ella Fitzger­ald and many oth­er greats. She record­ed film music and played with the Nation­al Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra. She appeared on The Ed Sul­li­van Show five times.

Though often com­pared to Gene Kru­pa, whom she con­sid­ers a “love­ly per­son” and an influ­ence, Smith had a very dis­tinc­tive style all her own, char­ac­ter­ized by a twelve-drum kit with two 16-inch toms mount­ed on either side of her head, as you can see in the clip at the top of the post, in a 1939 per­for­mance with the Coquettes. This was no mere gim­mick. Smith had stud­ied tym­pa­ni at Jul­liard and import­ed clas­si­cal train­ing into her big band sound. (She claims drum­mer Louis Bellson’s use of two bass drums was due to her influ­ence.)

Why isn’t Vio­la Smith bet­ter known? It may have some­thing to do with patron­iz­ing cov­er­age in the press, where she was described as “the girl Gene Kru­pa,” the “fastest girl drum­mer,” “the famous girl drum­mer” etc. Oth­er female instru­men­tal­ists were sim­i­lar­ly belit­tled as “girl” nov­el­ty acts, or ignored, even when they played with band­lead­ers like Ben­ny Good­man, whose orches­tra fea­tured trum­pet play­ers Bil­lie Rogers and Lau­rie Frink. (Smith her­self frowns on women play­ing brass instru­ments, for some odd  rea­son.) In her Down Beat arti­cle, Vio­la named a num­ber of oth­er top female play­ers of the day who deserved more work and recog­ni­tion.

She may for­get things here and here, but Smith still has a steel-trap mem­o­ry for a 106-year old who has lived such a rich life. Her inter­view with Bar­rett is full of detailed rem­i­nisces (she briefly dat­ed Frank Sina­tra, for exam­ple). She gives us a pic­ture of a musi­cian at the top of her game and in full com­mand of her career dur­ing the gold­en age of big band swing. We can cred­it Smith’s life­time as a pro­fes­sion­al musi­cian with much of this con­fi­dence. Like all of her sib­lings she learned to play piano and read music from a young age, and she honed her skills as part of a hard-work­ing fam­i­ly “pit band,” as she says. But she was also dri­ven to suc­ceed above all else, leav­ing behind the con­ven­tion­al life each of her sib­ling band­mates even­tu­al­ly chose.

Smith did it her way—reportedly turn­ing down offers to play in Sinatra’s band and refus­ing band­leader Woody Her­man in order keep play­ing with the Coquettes. She played for the radio show Hour of Charm until she was 63, and has played con­certs recent­ly in Cos­ta Mesa, Cal­i­for­nia, where she now lives, tend­ed to by the staff of a quilt­ing sup­ply shop called Piece­mak­ers. Smith talks eas­i­ly about the sources of her musi­cal longevity—her fam­i­ly band, edu­ca­tion, and the tight-knit com­mu­ni­ty of musi­cians who embraced her.

As for her phys­i­cal vig­or and sta­mi­na, this she chalks up to the rig­or of play­ing the drums, and to relax­ing with a drink or two on occasion—a life­time of activ­i­ty and mod­er­a­tion that has helped keep her sharp and healthy after all of her con­tem­po­raries have passed away. See Smith in inter­views at 100, fur­ther up, and 102, just above, and read her recent inter­view at 106 at The Syn­co­pat­ed Times here.

via McGill Media

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Women of Jazz: Stream a Playlist of 91 Record­ings by Great Female Jazz Musi­cians

The Women of the Blues: Hear a Playlist of Great Blues Singers, from Bessie Smith & Etta James, to Bil­lie Hol­i­day & Janis Joplin

New Web Project Immor­tal­izes the Over­looked Women Who Helped Cre­ate Rock and Roll in the 1950s

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

The Best of the Edward Gorey Envelope Art Contest

What a delight it must have been to have been one of Edward Gorey’s cor­re­spon­dents, or even a postal work­er charged with han­dling his out­go­ing mail.

The late author and illus­tra­tor had a pen­chant for embell­ish­ing envelopes with the hairy beasts, pok­er-faced chil­dren, and cats who are the main­stays of his dark­ly humor­ous aes­thet­ic.

(A num­ber of these envelopes and some 60 post­cards and sketch­es are includ­ed in Float­ing Worlds: The Let­ters of Edward Gorey and Peter F. Neumey­erwhich doc­u­ments the cor­re­spon­dence-based friend­ship between Gorey and the author with whom he col­lab­o­rat­ed on three children’s books, includ­ing the delight­ful­ly macabre Don­ald Has a Dif­fi­cul­ty.)

The Edward Gorey House, a beloved Cape Cod res­i­dence turned muse­um, has been keep­ing the tra­di­tion alive with its annu­al Hal­loween Enve­lope Art Con­test.

Com­peti­tors of all ages vie for the oppor­tu­ni­ty to have their win­ning (and run­ners up and “very-close-to-being-run­ners-up”) Gorey-inspired entries dis­played in the Gorey House and its dig­i­tal exten­sions.

2019’s theme is the high­ly evoca­tive “Uncom­fort­able Crea­tures” … and depend­ing on the speed with which you can exe­cute a bril­liant idea and deliv­er it to the post office, you may still have a shot—entries must be post­marked by Mon­day, Octo­ber 21, with win­ners to be announced on Hal­loween.

In addi­tion to Stef Kiihn Aschenbrenner’s win­ning enve­lope from the 2018 contest’s over-18 cat­e­go­ry (top), some of our favorites from past years are repro­duced here. Our inky-black hearts are espe­cial­ly warmed to see the spir­it of the mas­ter kin­dling the imag­i­na­tions of the youngest entrants—special shout out to Daniel Miley, aged 4.

View five years’ worth of notable Hal­loween Enve­lope Con­test entries on the Edward Gorey House web­site (20182017201620152014) or down­load the offi­cial entry form and race to the post office with your bid for 2019 glo­ry.

Entries must be post­marked by Mon­day, Octo­ber 21 and addressed to Edward Gorey House, 8 Straw­ber­ry Lane, Yarmouth Port, MA 02675 USA.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lemo­ny Snick­et Reveals His Edward Gorey Obses­sion in an Upcom­ing Ani­mat­ed Doc­u­men­tary

Edward Gorey Talks About His Love Cats & More in the Ani­mat­ed Series, “Goreytelling”

Edward Gorey Illus­trates H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds in His Inim­itable Goth­ic Style (1960)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Novem­ber 4 when her month­ly book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain cel­e­brates Louise Jor­dan Miln’s “Woo­ings and Wed­dings in Many Climes (1900). Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Martin Luther King Jr. Explains the Importance of Jazz: Hear the Speech He Gave at the First Berlin Jazz Festival (1964)

Mar­tin Luther King Jr.’s dream of full inclu­sion for Black Amer­i­cans still seems painful­ly unre­al fifty years after his death. By most sig­nif­i­cant mea­sures, the U.S. has regressed. De fac­to hous­ing and school seg­re­ga­tion are entrenched (and wors­en­ing since the 60s and 70s in many cities); vot­ing rights erode one court rul­ing at a time; the racial wealth gap has widened sig­nif­i­cant­ly; and open dis­plays of racist hate and vio­lence grow more wor­ri­some by the day.

Yet the move­ment was not only about win­ning polit­i­cal vic­to­ries, though these were sure­ly the con­crete basis for its vision of lib­er­a­tion. It was also very much a cul­tur­al strug­gle. Black artists felt forced by cir­cum­stances to choose whether they would keep enter­tain­ing all-white audi­ences and pre­tend­ing all was well. “There were no more side­lines,” writes Ashawn­ta Jack­son at JSTOR Dai­ly. This was cer­tain­ly the case for that most Amer­i­can of art forms, jazz. “Jazz musi­cians, like any oth­er Amer­i­can, had the duty to speak to the world around them, and to oppose the bru­tal con­di­tions for Black Amer­i­cans.”

Many of those musi­cians could not stay silent after the mur­der of Emmett Till, the 16th Street Bap­tist Church bomb­ing in Birm­ing­ham, and a string of oth­er high­ly pub­li­cized and hor­rif­ic attacks. Jazz was chang­ing. As Amiri Bara­ka wrote in a 1962 essay, “the musi­cians who played it were loud­ly out­spo­ken about who they thought they were. ‘If you don’t like it, don’t lis­ten’ was the atti­tude.” That atti­tude came to define post-Civ­il Rights Black Amer­i­can cul­ture, a defi­ant turn away from appeas­ing white audi­ences and ignor­ing racism.

As jazz musi­cians embraced the move­ment, so the move­ment embraced jazz. While King him­self is usu­al­ly asso­ci­at­ed with the gospel singers he loved, he had a deep respect for jazz as a form that spoke of “some new hope or sense of tri­umph.” Jazz, wrote King in his open­ing address for the 1964 Berlin Jazz Fes­ti­val, “is tri­umphant music…. When life itself offers no order and mean­ing, the musi­cian cre­ates an order and mean­ing from the sounds of the earth which flow through his instru­ment. It is no won­der that so much of the search for iden­ti­ty among Amer­i­can Negroes was cham­pi­oned by Jazz musi­cians.”

Jazz not only gave order to chaot­ic, “com­pli­cat­ed urban exis­tence,” it also pro­vid­ed crit­i­cal emo­tion­al sup­port for the Move­ment.

Much of the pow­er of our Free­dom Move­ment in the Unit­ed States has come from this music. It has strength­ened us with its sweet rhythms when courage began to fail. It has calmed us with its rich har­monies when spir­its were down.

King’s take on jazz par­al­leled his artic­u­la­tions of the move­men­t’s goals—he always under­stood that the par­tic­u­lar strug­gles of Black Amer­i­cans had spe­cif­ic his­tor­i­cal roots, and required spe­cif­ic polit­i­cal reme­dies. But ulti­mate­ly, he believed that every­one should be treat­ed with dig­ni­ty and respect, and have access to the same oppor­tu­ni­ties and the same pro­tec­tions under the law.

Jazz is export­ed to the world. For in the par­tic­u­lar strug­gle of the Negro in Amer­i­ca there is some­thing akin to the uni­ver­sal strug­gle of mod­ern man. Every­body has the Blues. Every­body longs for mean­ing. Every­body needs to love and be loved. Every­body needs to clap hands and be hap­py. Every­body longs for faith.

Jazz music, said King, “is a step­ping stone towards all of these.” Wrought “out of oppres­sion,” it is music, he said, that “speaks for life,” even in the midst of what could seem like death and defeat. Read King’s full address at WCLK 91.9. And at the top of the post, hear the speech read by San Fran­cis­co Bay Area artists for a 2012 cel­e­bra­tion on King’s birth­day.

The 1964 Berlin Jazz Fes­ti­val (poster above) was the first in the illus­tri­ous annu­al event. See many oth­er stun­ning posters from the series here.

via JSTOR Dai­ly

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mar­tin Luther King, Jr.’s Hand­writ­ten Syl­labus & Final Exam for the Phi­los­o­phy Course He Taught at More­house Col­lege (1962)

The His­to­ry of Spir­i­tu­al Jazz: Hear a Tran­scen­dent 12-Hour Mix Fea­tur­ing John Coltrane, Sun Ra, Her­bie Han­cock & More

In the 1920s Amer­i­ca, Jazz Music Was Con­sid­ered Harm­ful to Human Health, the Cause of “Neuras­the­nia,” “Per­pet­u­al­ly Jerk­ing Jaws” & More

The Internet Archive Makes 2,500 More Classic MS-DOS Video Games Free to Play Online: Alone in the Dark, Doom, Microsoft Adventure, and Others

Back in 2015 we let you know that the Inter­net Archive made 2,400 com­put­er games from the era of MS-DOS free to play online: titles like Com­man­der KeenScorched Earth, and Prince of Per­sia may have brought back fond 1990s gam­ing mem­o­ries, as well as promised hours of more such enjoy­ment here in the 21st cen­tu­ry. That set of games includ­ed Id Soft­ware’s Wolfen­stein 3D, which cre­at­ed the genre of the first-per­son shoot­er as we know it, but the Inter­net Archive’s lat­est DOS-game upload — an addi­tion of more than 2,500 titles — includes its fol­low-up Doom, which took com­put­er gam­ing itself to, as it were, a new lev­el.

The Inter­net Archive’s Jason Scott calls this “our biggest update yet, rang­ing from tiny recent inde­pen­dent pro­duc­tions to long-for­got­ten big-name releas­es from decades ago.” After detail­ing some of the tech­ni­cal chal­lenges he and his team faced in get­ting many of the games to work prop­er­ly in web browsers on mod­ern com­put­ers — “a lot has changed under the hood and pro­grams were some­times only writ­ten to work on very spe­cif­ic hard­ware and a very spe­cif­ic set­up” — he makes a few rec­om­men­da­tions from this newest crop of games.

Scot­t’s picks include Microsoft Adven­ture, the DOS ver­sion of the very first com­put­er adven­ture game; the 1960s-themed rac­er Street Rod; and Super Munch­ers, one in a line of edu­ca­tion­al titles all of us of a cer­tain gen­er­a­tion will remem­ber from our class­room com­put­ers. Odd­i­ties high­light­ed by clas­sic game enthu­si­asts around the inter­net include Mr. Blob­by, based on the epony­mous char­ac­ter from the BBC com­e­dy show Noel’s House Par­ty; the undoubt­ed­ly thrilling sim­u­la­tor Pres­i­dent Elect — 1988 Edi­tion; and Zool, the only nin­ja-space-alien plat­former spon­sored by lol­lipop brand Chu­pa Chups.

This addi­tion of 2,500 com­put­er games to the Inter­net Archive also brings in no few undis­put­ed clas­sics whose influ­ence on the art and design of games is still felt today: Alone in the Dark, for exam­ple, prog­en­i­tor of the entire sur­vival-hor­ror genre; Microsoft Flight Sim­u­la­tor, inspi­ra­tion for a gen­er­a­tion of pilots; and Sim­C­i­ty 2000, inspi­ra­tion for a gen­er­a­tion of urban plan­ners. Among the adven­ture games, one of the strongest gen­res of the MS-DOS era, we have Dis­c­world, based on Ter­ry Pratch­et­t’s comedic fan­ta­sy nov­els, and from the mind of Har­lan Elli­son the some­what less comedic I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream. One glance at the Inter­net Archive’s updat­ed com­put­er game col­lec­tion reveals that, no mat­ter how many games you played in the 90s, you’ll nev­er be able to play them all.

Get more infor­ma­tion on the new batch of games at the Inter­net Archive.

via Boing Boing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Inter­net Arcade Lets You Play 900 Vin­tage Video Games in Your Web Brows­er (Free)

Free: Play 2,400 Vin­tage Com­put­er Games in Your Web Brows­er

Play a Col­lec­tion of Clas­sic Hand­held Video Games at the Inter­net Archive: Pac-Man, Don­key Kong, Tron and MC Ham­mer

1,100 Clas­sic Arcade Machines Added to the Inter­net Arcade: Play Them Free Online

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.


  • Great Lectures

  • Sign up for Newsletter

  • About Us

    Open Culture scours the web for the best educational media. We find the free courses and audio books you need, the language lessons & educational videos you want, and plenty of enlightenment in between.


    Advertise With Us

  • Archives

  • Search

  • Quantcast