Tag: William Tell Overture

In my mind, music linked together

Town Without Pity

Quite often, not to your surprise, music gets linked together in my mind.

American classical composer Aaron Copeland finished Appalachian Spring in 1944, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize. The ballet was written for dancer Martha Graham.

Copland uses Simple Gifts, a “Shaker song written and composed in 1848, generally attributed to Elder Joseph Brackett from Alfred Shaker Village.”
Here is the song Simple Gifts, performed by Yo-Yo Ma and Alison Krauss.
The Aaron Copland version of the Simple Gifts section is isolated here. The part starting at 2:24 was used as the theme for CBS Reports, which may be the first place I heard it.

Simple Gifts was also the template for Lord of the Dance, a hymn written by English songwriter Sydney Carter in 1963. It has been included in at least one hymnal I’ve sung from in the last quarter century.
Come to where the flavor is
As a kid, I thought the theme that accompanied the Marlboro cigarette commercials was magnificent.  I later discovered the tune from the movie The Magnificant Seven by Elmer Bernstein, which I have never seen.

Town Without Pity is a song performed by Gene Pitney and written by composer Dimitri Tiomkin and lyricist Ned Washington. I didn’t learn much about Pitney until after his commercial peak from 1961 to 1964.  The a cappella group, The Nylons, does an excellent cover version. The intro sounds to my ear very much like the theme to the television program Perry Mason, which I think is one of the finest pieces of pure music in that genre, especially the closing.

Of course, the William Tell Overture from Gioachino Rossini’s last opera is quite familiar. The third movement is often used in many animated features to represent a new day. Then the fourth movement was used as the theme for the television program The Lone Ranger. That final movement speeded up appears in the movie A Clockwork Orange.
Earth Day
Since it’s Earth Day, I thought of picking some appropriate songs for the occasion. Instead, there are links here and here and here. Inevitably, there is some overlap, but other tracks are unique to a list.

March rambling #1: wipe out cancer in a decade

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Louisville doctor says the breakthrough treatment could wipe out cancer in a decade. Even better, one of the subjects in the story is my friend Eddie, the Renaissance Geek!

Keefknight Cartoon: Colon. One of my brothers-in-law died from colorectal cancer in 2002, at the age of 41.

Why I Left the Right: How Studying Religion Made Me a Liberal.

The White House Welcomes Holler If You Hear Me: Black and Gay in the Church. See this powerful documentary in full (60 minutes).

The Disappearing Soldier.

Kintsugi: The Art of Embracing Damage.

K Troop: The story of the eradication of the original Ku Klux Klan.

Agrippa Hull, Thaddeus Kosciusko, and how Thomas Jefferson didn’t hold up his end of the agreement.

Nancy Reagan rejected Rock Hudson’s plea for help with AIDS treatment sent just months before his death.

Seattle Seahawks Kam Chancellor Wanted to Buy a Gym and Gym Employees Called the Cops on Him.

Formerly freewheeling Aubrey McClendon, now deceased.

Disney is screwing American families.

I was a telemarketer for four months back in 1977. If you hate telemarketers, you’ll love this robot designed to waste their time.

Dan Van Riper: Some crappy-looking old junk from my buildings.

Actor George Kennedy, RIP, who I remember from Cool Hand Luke, Earthquake, the Naked Gun movies, and a whole lot of episodic TV.

Making rubber bands and bagels. There’s a point in the processes where the two batters looks very much the same. Seriously.

shaft
TIME Magazine names male author Evelyn Waugh on female most-read list. (HT to Shooting Parrots.)

Why It Hurts So Much to Step On a LEGO. “Resistance, shiny hardness, and mega-strength.”

Study: Chocolate Makes You Smarter. Of course.

The long and tangled history of Alfred E. Neuman, of MAD magazine.

Russ Heath’s Comic About Being Ripped Off By Roy Lichtenstein.

Music

Billboard: George Martin, and Beatles – She’s Leaving Home, Strings Only (1967) and Dustbury’s favorite George Martin production, other than Beatles material.

The five best soul albums of all-time, according to St Paul & The Broken Bones

When I was in college, I played that first Emerson, Lake and Palmer album a lot. I could do a fair representation of the Moog ending of Lucky Man, sans instrument. Also, listen to Karn Evil 9 2nd Impression. Now Keith Emerson, ELP Keyboardist, Dead at 71.

With “A Group Called Smith”, Gayle McCormick was best remembered for her release in AUGUST of 1969 of Baby It’s You. She lost her battle with cancer and passed away in ST. LOUIS, on MARCH 1st, 2016 at age 67.

Joe Cuba – Bang Bang. #63 in 1966.

I think Rossini’s overture to William Tell is underrated because it’s so familiar.

January Ramblin’

The Rev. Roger Green was a priest of the Church of England.

Finding a Religious Common Ground. A reminder that the religions that sometimes divide us have much history in common. (CBS Sunday Morning)


From the Wikipedia:
One relatively minor aspect of the [Green Hornet] character that tends to be given limited exposure in the actual productions is his blood relationship to the Lone Ranger, another character created by [Fran] Striker. The Lone Ranger’s nephew was Dan Reid. In the Green Hornet radio shows, the Hornet’s father was likewise named Dan Reid, making Britt Reid the Lone Ranger’s great-nephew.

On November 11, 1947, radio show episode “Too Hot to Handle”, Britt tells his father that he, Britt, is the Green Hornet. After Dan’s initial shock and anger, Dan refers to a vigilante “pioneer ancestor” of theirs that Dan himself had ridden alongside within Texas. As he expressed pride in and love for his son, the Lone Ranger theme briefly played in the background.
The Lone Ranger property was sold to another company in the 1950s, which resulted in a legal complication that precluded The Lone Ranger from being directly associated with the Green Hornet.

And here’s a joint chronology of the Lone Ranger and the Green Hornet.

The Lone Ranger intro
Fred Foy, the announcer of the Lone Ranger, who died in December 2010, recreating the intro
the last 3/4s of the William Tell Overture by Rossini, the final section of which is the Lone Ranger theme

All The World Is Waiting or should be. Interesting history in five minutes, of the best known female character in comics, Wonder Woman.

Who could play the Marvel Comics character, the Black Panther?

Sean Smith resigned as L.A. bureau chief of Entertainment weekly to join the Peace Corps, which he wrote about in this Newsweek article. My favorite paragraph:
“Writing about Hollywood is like being a reporter at Disneyland. At first, you can’t believe that you get to spend every day in The Happiest Place on Earth. Everyone wants to ask you about your work. You’re surrounded by princesses, and the sky sparkles with pixie dust. But as the years go on, you learn about the oily machinery that manufactures all that enchantment. You see what Cinderella’s really like when that glass slipper comes off. And then one day you notice that the magic is gone, and all you’re left with is a small, small world.”

Daniel Johnston’s “Infinite Comic Book of Musical Greatness”
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Google Alert finds

A Friend Like Charlie
Charlie Green is 14 (on Feb. 16) and his father, Roger Green, is 70. They are bound together more than just by blood. It’s music that also binds them.

Teaming up with CareerBuilder provides our national, regional, and local advertisers with access to job seekers in towns and cities where we’ve not traditionally been present,” said Roger Green, Managing Director, Newsquest Digital Media. “Plus it provides our audience with the greatest number of opportunities for jobs and careers.”

Roger Green made this Freedom of Information request to Devon County Council; definitely my kind of thing.

The Rev. Roger Green was the father of Timothy Green. Roger was born about 1611 in England and came to Virginia in 1635 on the ship Abraham at the age of 24 years. The Rev. Roger Green was a priest of the Church of England and was active in establishing the Church of England in Virginia and North Carolina.

Roger Green, age 80, of Huntington [Indiana], died at 9:05 p.m. Monday (January 25, 2010) at Oakbrook Village in Huntington.

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