Dancers extraordinary

Fayard Nicholas and Harold Nicholas

Really, I had never seen anything like it. I cannot think of a more exhilarating sequence in film. If anything ever deserved a mic drop and walk off… I mean… I know what’s coming and I still look forward to the big finish.

Go ahead and read Fayard’s obituary.

A couple years ago, we saw The Fabulous Nicholas Brothers presented by Bruce Goldstein, who had gathered tributes and remarkable footage. While we knew going in that the brothers had made many more appearances than we had seen, the treasure trove that we saw…

More than that- the lives that Fayard and Harold lived…

I like baseball

and you don’t really like baseball if you don’t know at least a small amount about the Negro Leagues. If you’re young and you run into that subject, then it becomes difficult to reconcile with a beloved pastime. I also like jazz and and you don’t really like jazz if you don’t know about the exodus of great musicians to Europe starting in the 1950’s.

We now acknowledge the accomplishments of many of these players and musicians. We have statistics and recordings and interviews and books and all sorts of commemorations. In many ways, none of it feels different from our experience of the more mainstream players and artists. We are mistaken.

Go back to that official Nicholas Brothers website. Look again at that list of credits. There is an awful emptiness after 1948, when the brothers would have been 34 and 27. (Gene Kelly was 40 in Singin’ in the Rain. Fred Astaire was 54 in The Bandwagon.) That last year, they danced with Gene Kelly in The Pirate.

I don’t know… Maybe I should build that time machine and visit Paris in the late 1950’s…

Go ahead- reach out to Bruce Goldstein and ask him to bring his Nicholas Brothers show to your town. Their talent blazes across the screen. Like Josh Gibson and Dexter Gordon, they transcend our loss for the brief moments we are allowed in their recorded presence, leaving us all the more aware of our misfortune when the moments pass.

What’s it all about?

You’ve Got to Check This Out is a blog series about music, words, and all sorts of artistic matters. It started with an explanation. 72 more to go.

New additions to You’ve Got to Check This Out release regularly. Also, free humor, short works, and poetry post irregularly. Receive notifications on Facebook by friending or following Craig.

Images may be subject to copyright.

The Price of Butcher’s Meat

Book written by Reginald Hill

If you’re the sort of reader extroverted enough to venture into bookstores and other places where readers exist- or perhaps just haunt websites that attract similar ilk, then you are familiar with the volume reader. Perhaps like me, your first experience of such a person is the person who buys romance novels by the handful. Growing up when and where I did, door-to-door sales had a brief heyday. At our house, this meant the occasional appearance of a catalog dropped off by some soon-to-be-forlorn rep. Our household was not geared toward buying from unexpected random strangers.

One catalog languished on various shelves in its long journey to the trash bin. At some point, I espied it face down and saw that they sold books, of all things. They had a volume deal on romances, I believe, as well as a subscription option. Being young, it never occurred to me that you might want to read that many books in a month, especially since they all looked pretty much the same. I read a lot, but come on!

Over the years, I met some of those people who bought in large numbers. Costco and Sam’s had shrink-wrapped bundles of romances. Every now and then, I chatted with someone in a mystery bookstore who was shuffling back and forth to the counter building piles of paperbacks. I’m talking about thirty or forty. The first time, I actually confronted the woman because I thought she was buying gifts. Nope, that was her month’s allotment. She explained that she preferred reading to watching television and she tended to finish a book each day.

I admire her fortitude and I appreciate her enthusiasm. Heck, I’d like to find her now and press a few books into her hands.

But I am not her.

While I set aside time to read, I also set aside time for myriad other activities- not all so ennobling. Even more so, the idea of a steady literary diet of mysteries or romances or anything would drive me out of my mind. In fact, a long run of any type, even an epic-ly long single book, puts me in the mood for absolutely anything else.

Mysteries definitely fill a need when life feels like it is spinning out of control. More than almost any other genre, they provide reassurance that answers exist and perseverance pays off. More than once, I have gone deep into the genre and then backed away when life leveled off again.

This makes my steps back into the mystery pool rather tentative. Unknown authors can be exasperating, so I’m a little surprised that I grabbed The Price of Butcher’s Meat off the library shelf, since it was my first Reginald Hill and it was from the middle of a long-running series.

So, now I’ve started back at the beginning of the series and I’m slowly working my way through. Yes, I still take mystery breaks and I don’t only read Reginald Hill, but he’s in the mix because the books are so inviting. It’s like spending time with old friends, which was always the point for those high volume buyers, wasn’t it?

What’s it all about?

You’ve Got to Check This Out is a blog series about music, words, and all sorts of artistic matters. It started with an explanation. 73 more to go.

New additions to You’ve Got to Check This Out release regularly. Also, free humor, short works, and poetry post irregularly. Receive notifications on Facebook by friending or following Craig.

Images may be subject to copyright.

Crazy Face

Song written and performed by Van Morrison

I drove down that street of broken dreams in downtown Youngstown, dodging cracks and holes, praying to save my old Honda’s suspension. Maybe the beating was the vengeance of an old GM community on such a car.

The parking lot was behind the building, close to the entrance. I always thought it was a little strange that they didn’t have a door facing the street, as if that might make it too easy to get in or out. Depending on the season, parking spaces could be at a premium and I don’t recall if it was a holiday or not.

At the front desk, the regular folk signed the visitor log, but they had stopped perceiving me as a visitor, which felt easier most of the time if it hadn’t felt like a little more responsibility. My parents lived on the top floor and the elevators ran slow.

That gave plenty of opportunity to get to know the people waiting with you. All the guests nodded and smiled, but kept their peace. Many of the folks who lived there were happy to see an unfamiliar visage and started a conversation. For whatever reason, I had a few minutes quiet contemplation while I waited that day.

And I started hearing Crazy Face inside my head

About the time the elevator doors opened, they slid apart to the final words, “I got it from Jesse James”. I half expected Van Morrison to step forth, but he did not.

We never really think about the soundtrack playing in other people’s heads unless we’re engaging in heinous stereotyping. In those situations, music becomes another joke lopped in with the food that they must eat and the car that they must drive.

I imagine that the internal soundtrack is mostly situational for everyone. The tunes are influenced by movie soundtracks and whatever we heard the last time that we were in a similar situation.

Or, like me, you played a given recording over and over in order to prepare for a situation. My wife might suspect (and now knows) that I listened to Van Morrison’s His Band and Street Choir on heavy repeat for a couple hours before the night that I proposed. Nothing about it became our song and I didn’t carry a boombox with me for the occasion.

But the songs stay with me to this day, popping up at the strangest moments.

All right, the fact that I occasionally start hearing I’ve Been Working on the drive home from work at the end of the week is probably not too out there. Yet, I don’t know how the other people in line at the bank feel when I start humming Call Me Up in Dreamland. They’re probably just grateful that it’s not Pretty Boy Floyd.

What’s it all about?

You’ve Got to Check This Out is a blog series about music, words, and all sorts of artistic matters. It started with an explanation. 74 more to go.

New additions to You’ve Got to Check This Out release regularly. Also, free humor, short works, and poetry post irregularly. Receive notifications on Facebook by friending or following Craig.

Images may be subject to copyright.