Harping
I enjoyed the article on the mighty harp (December), but I would like to make one minor correction. If a blues tune is in the key of G, the harp will be in the key of C, which is a fourth higher, not a fifth as stated. Forgive my harping on a small point.
JAMES YOUNG; Seattle, Wash.
Mr. Coppage replies: Mr. Young is correct, as I understand it-C is a fourth higher than G. My manuscript didn't mention either a fourth or a fifth, but what I did write was apparently so confusing that it caused some editor to jump into the next octave in his counting (going on up, G is a fifth higher than C).
Let's just be thankful that cross-harp technique doesn't separate harp key and song key by a seventh--some of our editors would have to use both hands to count up to that.
Your article "Lo, the Mighty Harp" (December) was of the usual high quality, but not flawless. All proper respect was given to the masters we've lost, but the article neglected one of the few remaining individuals who gives his efforts to the purity of music as they did: Mick Jagger. Listen to that harp in Stop Breakin' Down ("Exile on Main Street").
Between that number and the early-Stones-style Sweet Black Angel, I have yet to hear better harp anywhere by anyone. Jagger is a present-day harp virtuoso, the ultimate in smooth harp playing. He has started a style that will probably die with him. Listen while you can.
BRIAN PATTERSON; Bristol, N.H.
Thanks to Noel Coppage for the beautiful review of the Little Sonny albums (December). I would agree to letting Cotton take the harp title, but if anybody is going to vie for it with him, Carey Bell is ahead of Little Sonny. Carey was in town the other day with Willie Dixon and the All-Stars (with Lafayette Leake on piano), and blew mostly chromatic during the two sets, and it was right tasty. He also played here with Big Walter last year, using both harps, and anybody who can keep up with Big Walter just has to be better than Little Sonny! But why is it that when all the really great harp players cut an album they spend 90 percent of the time singing and only 10 percent on the harp? There are damn few exceptions--times when they will play instrumentals-and so you have to wait for little bits and pieces of good harp playing. Frustrating, it is.
DOUG FULTON; Ann Arbor, Mich.
Noel Coppage's article, "Lo, the Mighty Harp!" (December) was extremely interesting and entertaining. However, I'm sorry it didn't present a bit more information on "classical" harmonica playing in this country and abroad. Perhaps mention should be made of the Society for the Preservation and Advancement of the Harmonica. For those who would like more information, the society's address is P.O. Box 3006, Detroit, Michigan 48231 .
ROY V. CHILDS; San Francisco, Cal.
Other Opera Essentials
I would like to extend my appreciation to George Jellinek for his enlightening comments on the new Turandot recording (November). It is a real pleasure nowadays to read a review that is presented in a fair and objective manner. I was also impressed with "Essentials of an Opera Library" (December).
However, I do feel II Trovatore should have been included and possibly Don Carlo should have been omitted.
JOSEPH LI VECCHI; Kearny, N.J.
With all due respect to George Jellinek's "Essentials of an Opera Library," he has (obviously inadvertently) overlooked real gold by not including Rossini's Mose in Egitto with Nicola Rossi Lemini, Agostino Lazzari, Giuseppe Gaddei, Lucia Danieli, and Caterina Mancini (Philips 580, three discs, mono only). For all who haven't heard it, try it (if you can get it)--you'll like it!
ROLLIN C. WILLIAMS; Salem, Conn.
One man's essential is another man's luxury.
Thank you, Mr. Jellinek, for giving me some ideas for building an opera library! I have collected instrumental classical music for years, and "The Basic Repertoire" and reviews found in STEREO REVIEW have been very positive guides. Thanks to your recent opera article, I now feel safe in launching out into this unexplored area of listening. Are there any plans for a similar article covering chamber music?
R. D. LANE; Willcox, Arizona
It is in the works. Ms. Lieberman & Co.
Speaking for myself and five friends here at UCLA, I must say that your magazine has lost a great deal of credibility for all of us after reading Mr. Coppage's reviews of Lori Lieberman (December). We think she is great, as are her writers, Gimbel and Fox. Their lyrics, and Ms. Lieberman's renditions of them, have been the subject of our classes in Rock Poe try. It seems that Mr. Coppage was handed two albums the night before and told to re view them by sunrise. He seems to have a personal grudge against the writers-so much venom and hatred was expressed in his re view of their work.
ROGER WOOD; Los Angeles, Cal.
Pity poor Poetry.
Noel Coppage's December review of Lori Lieberman's Capitol albums is a real paradox, combining perceptive and accurate statements with inane value judgments. His comments about Lori Lieberman's voice, intonation, and "beautifully formed tones" are quite appropriate. There seems to be little doubt in the mind of anyone who has heard her sing in person or on record that she is an extremely capable singer with a great future.
The comments about the songs themselves, however ("the Gimbel-Fox product") are completely without foundation or musical basis. Messrs. Gimbel and Fox command the respect and admiration of the musical community, and have arrived at mature musical statement. Songs like Eleazar or / Go Along demonstrate this. Whatever Mr. Coppage's personal feelings are regarding Killing Me Softly, it is certainly not "contrived" and "grotesque." In its many vocal and instrumental arrangements over the past year, it has held up quite well and is a substantial musical composition.
To attribute "hack attitudes" to such a songwriting team is grotesque indeed! Mr. Fox is one of the finest and most serious com posers on the musical scene today. Mr. Gimbel's lyrics are just as fine and well thought out. I would like to know what credentials Mr. Coppage has to make such sweeping statements. My own musical background is extensive, and 90 percent of my record listening is strictly classical. If Lori Lieberman's albums have found a place on my shelves along with Schubert, Brahms, Mahler, etc., they must have more substance than the "ma chine-made" qualities Mr. Coppage bestows on them. The total effect of Mr. Coppage's review is to cast doubt on his insight and integrity rather than reflect any light on the two albums he has reviewed.
ARNOLD CHANIN, M.A., M.D. Lawndale, Cal.
The Editor replies: Strictly speaking, a "hack" is someone who writes for pay, including poets, critics, novelists, and journalists of all stripes and excluding only those lucky gentleman artists (they must surely be few) who can afford to write for their trunks. There is a great demand for such writing, because hungry newspapers, magazines, and books must be filled and refilled. Since, for the most part, those who consume this writing pay little attention to its quality, the profession attracts (a) those who could not write well if they had to and (b) those who could write well if they chose to but don't, knowing it would snake little difference if they did. Thus, even though there are many delightful exceptions, "hack" has come to mean, by extension, any writer, artist, or composer who cannot or will not work much above an irreducible minimum of quality.
Now, as to the songwriting team of Gimbel and Fox, to which Mr. Coppage has attributed "hack attitudes," let us examine the central work in point, Killing Me Softly with His Song. The music first: what Mr. Coppage calls an "ingratiating melody" is just that; it is not a great melody on the level of say, Bach's Air for the G String, Amazing Grace, Mozart's "Elvira Madigan" theme, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, or Villa-Lobos' Bachianas No. 5. It is more accurately a tune, catchy almost to the point of irritation, destined to become, in time, a musical earache. And it has a fatal flaw: the tacked-on "folkish" cadence at the end is, in context, pretentious and meretricious, self-consciously "arty" and tarty. But it is hard to demonstrate melodic quality, the superiority or the inferiority of one melody over another, the question being almost wholly a matter of subjective judgment and individual taste.
Not so, however, in the case of the lyrics.
First, the unexpected juxtaposition of the words "killing" and "softly" is simply a gimmick, a cheap trick designed to impress the unsophisticated ear with its "poetry." The proof is in the parody the line begs for: "smashing-sweetly," "clobbering-tenderly," "murdering-benignly"-but you can roll your own. Further, the figurative use of the word "killing" is a dated piece of slang, already on its way out of even the most limited vocabularies, already almost as quaint-sounding as "twenty-three skiddoo." It also conjures up, unfortunately, a rather Hollywoodish image:
a blondined, gum-popping, truck-stop waitress giving it back to some fresh trailer jock ey-"You just kill me!" But the worst is yet to come, for the lyric's most serious flaw is revealed when it faces the music. Because of the way it repeatedly lies on the tune, it is simply impossible to sing the line "killing me softly with his song" without emphasizing the word "his," and that emphasis plays total havoc with the meaning. The interpretive possibilities are many, but try just one: the emphasis suggests contradistinction, but if it is not his song, whose is it?
Hers? Ours? Mine? None of the above, of course, but sense has already been destroyed. Words and music can go together artfully in this case only if the tune is altered to remove the emphasis or if the emphasis does not distort meaning (windsong, say, or birdsong or even lovesong would work, but would also, of course, dictate considerable lyric rewrite).
Enter, then, the "hack attitudes." There are two possibilities: either Gimbell Fox did not recognize this wince-producing flaw at all, or they did recognize it and let it stand as "good enough"; it's hack either way. It cannot be defended by pointing out that other songs including The Star-Spangled Banner- have the same kind of flaw; that only makes them flawed songs too. The SSB, at least, is the result of marrying Francis Scott Key's verses to an already written melody; Gimbel and Fox are a songwriting team, however, and their joint efforts should offer some evidence that they are still speaking to each other at least as often as Gilbert spoke to Sullivan, Rodgers to Hart, George to Ira, or Cole Porter to himself.
The crude, unfinished, gifted-amateur quality of much-most-popular music of the last decade springs front the apparent total absence in its creators of the faculty of self-criticism. If they do not have it, it will be supplied by sensitive critics like Noel Coppage. The general public, of course, is unconcerned, quite capable of making resounding commercial successes of Mairzy Doats, Three Little Fishies, or the Hut Sut Song. Let Mr. Chanin not be over-impressed, therefore, with Killing Me's "many vocal and instrumental arrangements." The record companies will "cover" literally anything that has proved profitable for someone else. I will suppress the image that activity brings to mind.
Discovering the Classics
When I received my December copy of your stupendous mag, I immediately plunked myself down and began reading the letters first, as I always do. I am glad that there are some people who want to discover classical music. Perhaps my experience will be helpful.
Ten years ago, when I was five, I was dragged along with my older brother into a decrepit movie "palace" to see Fantasia, and I think I shall never forget that movie as long as I live because it turned me on to classical music. There I sat in a horrid, lumpy seat.
enjoying that phantasmagorical flick as I have never enjoyed anything since. The next morning, I asked my mom for some money with which to buy a couple of records. She was so glad that I had tuned in to classical music that she bought me a record of every piece on the Fantasia program. I still have them, along with about 170 others. So therein lies my tale.
May it be a help to those who as yet haven't discovered the classics and those who have forgotten how gorgeous they are.
JOHN VOLAND; Van Nuys, Cal.
Rock, especially of the heavy variety, has been my favorite type of music since its ad vent. However, I began to appreciate the classics at the age of thirteen ( I'm now twenty) with Beethoven's Sixth Symphony, a fantastic way to start. Now my tastes are pretty limited, but rather fanatical: Beethoven symphonies, Bach organ works, Beethoven's concertos (the violin ones especially), Romantic concertos, and freak pieces like Pictures at an Exhibition, which I recommend as the best starter for anyone, especially jaded rockers looking for something really boggling. Good advice to anyone, however, is indeed "The Basic Repertoire"-they're not called war horses for nothing.
BOB KANEDA; Cambridge, Mass.
Since my first serious involvement with classical music came about via Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring, a piece well-known for its antipathetic effect upon the uninitiated, I had thought I should sit out the "dance of the proselytizers." However, it strikes me that no one has suggested the most appropriate piece for a rock freak to listen to classical music by (most groups have borrowed from it at one time or another)- Ravel's Bolero. Get the Bernstein recording, and play it loud: if that doesn't convince you that classical music isn't all minuets, blame it on the Stones.
ALLEN WATSON III
San Francisco, Cal.
With all the letters you have been receiving with advice to "classical rookies" on which records to buy, I'm surprised no one has mentioned what is the least expensive solution: buy a decent portable or table FM radio, tune in a classical music station, and listen to it and no other station. You may hear a lot of music you like, plus a lot you won't.
Should the station have a request program, you can enjoy a second listening to the music of your choice. This will give you ideas for future record purchases.
WILLIAM M. FETCHER
San Diego, Cal.
I have been following your "Classics for Rookies" exchange with fascination, recalling the joyous discoveries of my own odyssey out of boredom with AM rock as a teenager, starting with Sibelius' Finlandia and building to my 200-plus album collection, which extends from Perotin to Penderecki and from Ali Akbar Khan to Joplin (Scott and Janis). I have two suggestions to offer the neophyte, to help him find the vast musical riches that give me so much joy.
First, while you probably should start with the Classic and Romantic favorites, don't deny yourself the wonders of both older and newer music; don't fall victim to the 1750 1910 tunnel vision that affects too many classical listeners. Don't confine your geographical taste, either; explore American, Indian, Indonesian, Japanese, and other non- European schools of composition and performance.
My second suggestion is a general one.
Don't be so caught up in the rugged-individualist I-know-what-l-like syndrome that you think it's somehow reprehensible to listen, and listen hard, to a piece just because some one tells you it is good. In the case of a recognized masterpiece, the chances are that if it doesn't impress you at first, the fault is yours rather than its. I have forced myself to listen to pieces that either failed to impress me (Beethoven's Eroica!) or that I utterly hated (Maxwell-Davies' Revelation and Fall) at first, only to connect with their beauty and value by dint of long effort at raising my level of comprehension closer to theirs. My latest revelation is Bach's Mass in B Minor, which I had long feared but now love. Just remember that it's a huge musical universe: don't cheat yourself out of any part of it.
EDWIN FROWNFELTER
Carlisle, Pa.
James Lyons (1925-1973)
The tragically premature death, at forty seven, of James Lyons, editor and publisher of The American Record Guide, represents a grievous loss to the American musical scene in terms of both creative writing and creative action.
Following a rigorous apprenticeship in newspaper music criticism, Jim took over The American Record Guide, the oldest (established 1935) independent record-review publication in the U.S., from its retiring editor and publisher Peter Hugh Reed. (Only The New Records. the house organ of the H. Royer Smith Co. in Philadelphia, antedates ARG, having been started in 1933.) Not content just with keeping up the high standards of the ARG, Jim involved himself in a host of other activities that contributed to the welfare of the music and recording fields, not the least being his work with the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences' Grammy awards and its educational projects.
In all these activities, the work that came out under his byline was never less than first class, and more often than not it was genuinely distinguished. I remember with special pleasure the remarkable liner notes he turned out for the Mercury album of the complete Tchaikovsky orchestral suites with Dorati and the London Symphony; his program notes for the Boston Symphony won a 1968 ASCA P-Deems Taylor Award.
Even so, Jim's record of professional achievement over his all-too-short life span does not begin to match the vast appetite for living, for working, and for the exchange of ideas that was the essence of the man himself.
Being in his presence under any and all conditions was infallibly stimulating and occasion ally (and rightly) jolting. He will be fondly remembered and sadly missed.
DAVID HALL, Head Rodgers & Hammerstein Archives
New York, N.Y.
During my first week in New York, when I came to work for Saturday Review in 1962, James Lyons, whom I had never met, tele phoned and invited me to lunch at the Russian Tea Room-just to make me welcome and let me know I had a friend in the city. The gesture was unique in my experience, but not in his. Jim was, in the best sense, a big brother to dozens- perhaps hundreds-of writers, musicians, and record people; he was a veritable clearinghouse for information on job openings and candidates to fill them, and always eager (and almost always incredibly able) to provide help in situations both related and unrelated to professional activity-all the while laboring a hundred hours a week or so to maintain the continuity and standards of the American Record Guide and setting examples for his colleagues in the resourcefulness of his annotative work.
For years both newcomers and veterans in the musical community gathered at Jim's place every Friday night to eat, drink, and make valuable contacts (some of them professional, some of them personal). These soirees were taken for granted as something like a "public service" by many who participated in them, but, like the ARG itself, they received no outside subsidy; they were cut down when Jim's health began to fail. Neither his home nor his heart was ever closed to anyone, though, and he continued to function in his clearinghouse role till the day he died.
While Jim never imposed a feeling of obligation with his benefactions, there is hardly anyone in our field under the age of fifty who is not somehow in his debt-some of us for jobs, some for introductions to productive collaborators, some for technical or professional guidance, and some for just the exceptionally genuine interest and encouragement that kept us going when all the bridges seemed to be down. For many of us, what made Jim so special was his demonstration of how compatible a driving professional commitment and an uncommon warmth of heart can be.
RICHARD FREED Rockville, Md.
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