May 16 - Woody Herman (The Musical Birthday Series, 3rd Annual Cycle)

Previous posts for May 16th may be found here: Liberace (2019) and Richard Tauber (2020)

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Woodie Herman (16 May 1913 – 29 October 1987) was an American jazz clarinetist, saxophonist, singer, and big band leader leader. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An Ebony Concerto Trilogy

 ... Stravinsky described the massive amount of smoking at the recording session of the Ebony Concerto, saying "the atmosphere looked like Pernod clouded by water." --adapted from Wikipedia

 

Herman… did not feel that Stravinsky had really adapted his writing to the jazz-band idiom. Instead, he "wrote pure Stravinsky"...  —Wikipedia

[1] Atmosphere

In a studio heavy with smoke,

Stravinsky considered, and spoke,

“The air and its flow

Is like cloudy Pernod.” —-

Which meant nothing to regular folk.

[2] Cavalier

 

Except for its instrumentation,

Which features a big band formation,

This wasn’t a chart

That was likely to start

A new Woody Herman sensation.

[3] Outta Here

And when they had finished the score,

The manager begged them, “No more!”

He gruffly asserted,

“The bar is deserted,

And no one is out on the floor!”

 

 

 

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