SST Blog

3/25/19   I was thinking about titling my new book of public domain songs Songs My Mother Sang to Me. My mother was born in 1924, so all this music was written before she was born. I might have called the book Songs My Grandmother Sang to Me, but I don't remember her ever singing. If she did sing, though, she would also have known these songs. There is nothing unusual about my family—every American for generations knew these songs. It's part of our American heritage. At least, it used to be.   As a child, I listened to children's...

2/21/19   At my first trumpet lesson with Jimmy Maxwell, he asked me why I wanted to play the trumpet.  "I want to play jazz," I told him.  He then said, "Good, because I've spent my career trying to make bad music sound good, and you're too smart for that."  On the other hand, his advice to his son, David, before he left for college was, "The world is full of shit.  If you develop a taste for it, you'll never go hungry."  David became a Russian scholar and beloved college president.     My lessons with Jimmy were 90...

2/4/19   Growing up in the 1950s and '60s, I was bombarded with great singers daily on TV and records. My mom watched Perry Como and Dinah Shore every week, and with my grandfather we watched Ed Sullivan on Sunday nights, where we got a steady diet of Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Jimmy Durante, Eydie Gormé, Doris Day, and all sorts of Broadway stars. When I was 12, I discovered jazz, and then it was Ray Charles, Joe Williams, Louis Armstrong, Nat Cole, Sarah Vaughan, Anita O'Day, Ella Fitzgerald, and Dinah Washington for me.    I started arranging for my...

2/3/19   I just watched a piece on TV about a company called Arte Factum. They create exact replicas of art, from the contents of King Tut’s tomb to Renaissance paintings. Using innovative technology, they are able to scan and enlarge the originals and then recreate their look and texture. Sounds exciting, right?   The thing is that they replicate exactly how those works of art appear today with all their centuries of wear and tear. I’m not sure I see the point of all this, since you can go see the original in the same state of decay. What...

1/27/19   This morning I watched CBS Sunday Morning as I usually do when I am at home on a Sunday. This particular week’s show was their 40th anniversary show, where they played highlights from shows of the past 40 years. After a while, I began to notice a pattern. With very few exceptions, they presented clips of pop culture stars or of ordinary people and children. It made me think that so little time on TV is given to true masters of the arts and/or geniuses.   They showed 5 seconds of Arthur Miller joking about loving all the...