I interviewed Oscar-winning actress Eva Marie Saint. Ms. Saint talked about growing up near Albany, N.Y., why she expected to be a third-grade teacher and how she found a pin in a haystack.
We also talked about On the Waterfront (1954) and the famous glove-dropping scene. It was an accident that occurred in a rough take that director Elia Kazan insisted she do again in subsequent takes. Marlon Brando ingeniously put on her dropped glove. As I mentioned to Ms. Saint (to her delight), she’s one of the only great actresses who acts with her mouth. Watch how it changes based on the mood of her character. Extraordinary. That glove scene with Ms. Saint and Brando…
Ms. Saint in North by Northwest (1959), with Cary Grant…
SiriusXM. If you missed me Thursday on SiriusXM’s Feedback (ch. 106) with Nik Carter and Lori Majewski, you can still hear the entire show. I broke down Black Sabbath’s Paranoid and we traced the origins of heavy metal from 1954 to 1970.
Frank Sinatra. The best book on Sinatra is Will Friedwald’s Sinatra! The Song Is You (Chicago Review Press). It’s now out in an expanded paperback edition with a forward by Tony Bennett.
John Coltrane. Following my post last week on John Coltrane’sTraneing In, Bob Porter, a former Prestige producer and author of Soul Jazz, sent along a fascinating email explaining why the album had one cover in 1957 and another in ’61..
“Even though Rudy Van Gelder began recording in stereo in 1957, Prestige did not release stereo albums until more than a year later. Albums on Prestige’s New Jazz label were rarely issued in stereo. While some of Van Gelder’s stereo sessions were mixed down to mono, he ran one mono and one stereo machine during sessions.
“But the new Traneing In cover in 1961 wasn’t motivated by new technology. What controlled the decision to reissue an album was the inventory of cardboard jackets and cover slicks. If you had slicks, you could fabricate jackets. But once your slicks were gone, your album was out of print. In some cases, like John Coltrane with the Red Garland Trio (1957), when the cover slicks were gone, Prestige owner Bob Weinstock simply had a new design created with Coltrane’s image instead and re-issued the album as Traneing In (1961).”
Kenny Barron. Don Glanden sent along a link to an interview he did with pianist Kenny Barron in October. Don is head of Graduate Jazz Studies at Philadelphia’s University of the Arts.
Winard Harper, a jazz drummer and host of Moore’s Lounge in Jersey City, N.J., was profiled by David Menzies in the The Jersey Journal. Harper will be playing a tribute to the late saxophonist Nathan Davis at Moore’s this Sunday.
What the heck. In 1970, when Diana Ross left the Supremes, she was replaced by Jean Terrell. The group, sans Ross, had a hit with Up the Ladder to the Roof, which peaked at #10 on the Billboard pop chart in the spring of ’70…
Oddball album cover of the week.
Another gruesome cover by an art direction team with little imagination and probably even less time to execute. “Hey, Joe has this weird gas mask at his desk. Might be good for the cover. Pete Jolly’s a gas so it might work.”
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