Podcast appearances and mentions of Darius Milhaud

The commission for a new Clarinet Concerto from the great American composer Aaron Copland came from a rather unlikely source: Benny Goodman, the man known as the King of Swing. Goodman was one of the most famous and important jazz musicians of all time, but in the late 1940s, swing music was on the decline, and bebop had taken over. Goodman experimented with bebop for a time but never fully took to it in the way that he had so mastered swing. Goodman then turned towards the classical repertoire, commissioning music from many of the great composers of the time, such as Bela Bartok, Darius Milhaud, Paul Hindemith, Francis Poulenc, and of course, Aaron Copland. Copland eagerly agreed to the commission, and spent the next year carefully crafting the concerto, which is full of influences from Jazz as well as from Latin American music, perhaps inspired by the four months Copland spent in Latin America while writing the piece. What resulted from all this was a short and compact piece in one continuous movement split into two parts. With an orchestra of only strings, piano, harp, and solo clarinet, Copland created one of the great solo masterpieces of the 20th century. It practically distills everything that makes Copland so great into just 18 minutes of music. Today on the show we'll talk about the difficulty of the piece, something that prevented Benny Goodman from performing the concerto for nearly 2 years, as well as the immense difficulty of the second movement for the orchestra. We'll also talk about all of those quintessentially Copland traits that make his music so wonderful to listen to, and the path this concerto takes from beautiful openness to jazzy fire. Join Us!  Recording: Martin Frost with the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra Pedro Henrique Alliprandini dissertation: https://getd.libs.uga.edu/pdfs/alliprandini_pedro_h_201812_dma.pdf

Se ascolti Les Chemins de l'amour, una canzone di Francis Poulenc, potresti pensare che sia una melodia spumeggiante da cantare in un cabaret parigino. Ma se si approfondisce la biografia di Poulenc, si scopre che è autore anche di un'opera corale, Gloria, e ci si rende conto che si sta ascoltando qualcosa che sta rasentando il profondo. E se si scava ancora di più nella storia di Poulenc, si scopre che ha scritto anche l'opera Dialoghi delle Carmelitane, dove si viene travolti da una straziante profondità. (In questa opera suore carmelitane in fila marciano verso la ghigliottina mentre cantano il Salve Regina e vanno incontro alla morte una alla volta. Non per i deboli di cuore.)   Ma chi era Francis Poulenc, questo camaleonte compositore capace di deliziare l'orecchio e sconvolgere l'anima? In apparenza, era un affascinante gentiluomo parigino erede di un impero farmaceutico. Ma era molto di più. Approfondiamo la sua storia.   Biografia di Francis Poulenc   Francis Poulenc (1899-1963) è stato un compositore e pianista francese che ha dato un contributo significativo alla musica del XX secolo. Le sue composizioni includono canzoni, opere per pianoforte solo, musica da camera, brani corali, opere, balletti e musica orchestrale. Gran parte della sua musica è melodica, affascinante ed effervescente.   Poulenc era l'unico figlio di Émile Poulenc, un produttore farmaceutico di successo, e Jenny Royer. Anche se fu in gran parte autodidatta, Poulenc studiò con il pianista Ricardo Viñes (1875-1953) e il compositore Charles Koechlin (1867-1950).   Poco più che ventenne, Poulenc entrò a far parte del gruppo di giovani compositori noti come Les Six, ovvero Georges Auric, Louis Durey, Arthur Honegger, Darius Milhaud, Poulenc e Germaine Tailleferre. Grazie alla partitura vivace e melodica per il balletto Les Biches (1924) Poulenc fu consacrato immediatamente come compositore dalla voce unica che si distingueva dagli altri membri di quel gruppo.   Poulenc fu anche un abile pianista che spesso accompagnò l'illustre baritono Pierre Bernac (1899-1979) sia in recital che in registrazioni di notevoli canzoni di Poulenc.   Più tardi, Poulenc compose la sorprendente opera Dialoghi delle Carmelitane (1957), un'opera potente basata su eventi storici della Rivoluzione francese. Seguì il suo Gloria (1959), un'opera corale per soprano, coro e orchestra. Era un compositore che continuava a evolversi, e alla fine arrivò a un livello molto alto.   Canzoni   Banalités (un insieme di 5 canzoni su poesie di Guillaume Apollinaire)   Les Chansons villageoises (ciclo di canzoni su testi rustici scritti dallo stesso Poulenc)   Opere   Dialoghi delle Carmelitane   La Voix Humaine   Balletti   Les Biches   Concerti   Concerto per due pianoforti e orchestra in re minore   Concert champêtre per clavicembalo e orchestra   Opere corali   Gloria per Soprano, Coro e Orchestra   Musica da camera   Sonata per flauto e pianoforte

En 1922, les premières sambas résonnent dans les boîtes de Pigalle, interprétées par les musiciens noirs des Batutas, qui évoluent entre les jazzmen et les formations tziganes. A la Madeleine, les avant-gardes artistiques se bousculent au Bœuf sur le toit, un cabaret au nom carnavalesque inspiré d'un ballet brésilien de Darius Milhaud. Le Brésil, chanté par Blaise Cendrars et Tarsila do Amaral, est aussi celui des sambistas, des danseurs mondains et des black's step qui font vibrer le Paris Noir des Années folles. Conférence présentéé parAnaïs Fléchet, professeure d'histoire contemporaine à Sciences Po Strasbourg.

Vielen ist die französische Komponistin Germaine Tailleferre nur als Fussnote der Musikgeschichte bekannt, als einziges weibliches Mitglied der losen Komponistengruppe «Groupe des Six». Wie ihre Kollegen dort, u.a. Arthur Honegger, Francis Poulenc und Darius Milhaud, blieb sie als Reaktion auf die Spätromantik einer eher verschlankten Klangästhetik treu, und auch sie gehörte nicht zur musikalischen Avantgarde. «Ich habe ein unendlich schwieriges Leben, und darum schreibe ich fröhliche Musik», soll sie einmal gesagt haben. Unter anderem ihre Harfensonate aus dem Jahr 1953 beweist, dass Tailleferre weit mehr ist als eine Randerscheinung. Es ist ein so originelles wie zugängliches Stück - nur eines aus Tailleferres eindrücklich grossem Œuvre. Im gleichen Jahrzehnt wie die Harfensonate schrieb die damals bereits über 60-jährige Französin vier ihrer Opern bzw. Kammeropern. Auch diverse Klavier-, Kammermusik, Lieder, Orchestrales wie auch konzertante Werke hinterliess Tailleferre, die auch eine ausgezeichnete Pianistin war. Wie bei so vielen weiblichen Komponierenden ist auch das meiste von ihr noch nicht verlegt und aufgenommen worden. Den Grossteil ihres Werks (wie auch ihres Lebens) gilt es also noch zu entdecken und aufzuarbeiten. Gäste von Moritz Weber sind die Musikjournalistin Corinne Holtz und die Harfenistin Selina Cuonz.

Pianist/composer Dave Brubeck and Alto Saxophonist Paul Desmond are enshrined in jazz history as the most prominent voices of the popular Dave Brubeck quartet. This group cast an outsized shadow over the jazz scene of the 1950's and 1960's, Desmond's composition "Take Five" is one of the most beloved jazz compositions of all time and was the biggest hit the quartet ever had. Brubeck incorporated diverse musical influences, including that of French composer Darius Milhaud to fashion a style that incorporated odd rhythmic meters and polytonality into a fusion that predated the “third stream” movement. Desmond is perhaps the most influential voice on his instrument since Charlie Parker, he was famously quoted as saying his lyrical, pure sound on the instrument was a result of his wanting to sound like a “dry martini". His series of recordings with guitarist Jim Hall are masterpieces of melodic inventiveness, a testament to his spare, beautiful voice as both composer and performer. Enjoying the show? Help keep it going by donating here.

This week on The Sound Kitchen you'll hear the answer to the question about the number of medals won by French Paralympians in the triathlon events at the 2024 Paris Paralympics Games. There's “On This Day”, “The Listener's Corner”, Ollia Horton's “Happy Moment”, and Erwan Rome's “Music from Erwan". All that, and the new quiz and bonus questions too, so click on the “Play” button above and enjoy!  Hello everyone! Welcome to The Sound Kitchen weekly podcast, published every Saturday – here on our website, or wherever you get your podcasts. You'll hear the winner's names announced and the week's quiz question, along with all the other ingredients you've grown accustomed to: your letters and essays, “On This Day”, quirky facts and news, interviews, and great music … so be sure and listen every week.Erwan and I are busy cooking up special shows with your music requests, so get them in! Send your music requests to thesoundkitchen@rfi.fr  Tell us why you like the piece of music, too – it makes it more interesting for us all!Facebook: Be sure to send your photos to thesoundkitchen@rfi.fr for the RFI English Listeners Forum banner!More tech news: Did you know we have a YouTube channel? Just go to YouTube and write “RFI English” in the search bar, and there we are! Be sure to subscribe to see all our videos.Would you like to learn French? RFI is here to help you!Our website “Le Français facile avec RFI” has news broadcasts in slow, simple French, as well as bilingual radio dramas (with real actors!) and exercises to practice what you have heard.Go to our website and get started! At the top of the page, click on “Test level”. According to your score, you'll be counselled to the best-suited activities for your level.Do not give up! As Lidwien van Dixhoorn, the head of “Le Français facile” service told me: “Bathe your ears in the sound of the language, and eventually, you'll get it.” She should know – Lidwien is Dutch and came to France hardly able to say “bonjour” and now she heads this key RFI department – so stick with it!Be sure you check out our wonderful podcasts!In addition to the breaking news articles on our site, with in-depth analysis of current affairs in France and across the globe, we have several podcasts that will leave you hungry for more.There's Paris Perspective, Spotlight on France, Spotlight on Africa, and of course, The Sound Kitchen. We have an award-winning bilingual series – an old-time radio show, with actors (!) to help you learn French, called Les voisins du 12 bis. And there is the excellent International Report, too.Remember, podcasts are radio, too! As you see, sound is still quite present in the RFI English service. Please keep checking our website for updates on the latest from our journalists. You never know what we'll surprise you with!To listen to our podcasts from your PC, go to our website; you'll see “Podcasts” at the top of the page. You can either listen directly or subscribe and receive them directly on your mobile phone.To listen to our podcasts from your mobile phone, slide through the tabs just under the lead article (the first tab is “Headline News”) until you see “Podcasts”, and choose your show. Teachers take note! I save postcards and stamps from all over the world to send to you for your students. If you would like stamps and postcards for your students, just write and let me know. The address is english.service@rfi.fr  If you would like to donate stamps and postcards, feel free! Our address is listed below. Another idea for your students: Br. Gerald Muller, my beloved music teacher from St. Edward's University in Austin, Texas, has been writing books for young adults in his retirement – and they are free! There is a volume of biographies of painters and musicians called Gentle Giants, and an excellent biography of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., too. They are also a good way to help you improve your English - that's how I worked on my French, reading books that were meant for young readers – and I guarantee you, it's a good method for improving your language skills. To get Br. Gerald's free books, click here.Independent RFI English Clubs: Be sure to always include Audrey Iattoni (audrey.iattoni@rfi.fr) from our Listener Relations department in your RFI Club correspondence. Remember to copy me (thesoundkitchen@rfi.fr) when you write to her so that I know what is going on, too. N.B.: You do not need to send her your quiz answers! Email overload!This week's quiz: On 7 September, I asked you a question about the Paris Paralympics 2024. You were to re-read our article “Golden glory for French para-triathletes despite delays over Seine water quality” and send in the answers to these two questions: How many medals did the French Paralympians win in the triathlon events that were held on 2 September, and: What are the three sports that make up a triathlon?The answer is: French Paralympians won four medals in the triathlon events. Alexis Hanquinquant and Jules Ribstein both won gold in their divisions, Thibaut Rigaudeau and Antoine Perel won bronze in the competition for visually impaired athletes.And which three sports make up a triathlon? Swimming, bicycling, and running. In addition to the quiz question, there was the bonus question: "What is the scariest creature you have ever encountered?", which was suggested by Alan Holder from the Isle of Wight, England.  Do you have a bonus question idea? Send it to us! The winners are: RFI Listeners Club member Swapan Kumar Chandra from Kolkata, India – who is back in the kitchen with us after a long break … welcome back, Swapan! Swapan is also this week's bonus question winner – congratulations!Also on the list of lucky winners this week are A. K. M. Nuruzzaman, the president of the RFI Amour Fan Club in Rajshahi, Bangladesh, and Rasheed Naz, the chairman of the Naz RFI Internet Fan Club in Faisal Abad, Pakistan. There's RFI Listeners Club member Radhakrishna Pillai from Kerala State in India, and last but certainly not least, RFI English listener Shihab Ali Khondaker from Naogaon, Bangladesh.Congratulations winners!Here's the music you heard on this week's programme: Le Boeuf sur le Toit by Darius Milhaud, performed by the Ulster Orchestra conducted by Yan Pascal Tortelier; “Love Me Do” by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, played by The Beatles; “Les Jours Heureux” by Cyrille Aufort; “The Flight of the Bumblebee” by Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov; “The Cakewalk” from Children's Corner by Claude Debussy, performed by the composer; “Happy” by Pharrell Williams, and “At The Centerline” by Brian Blade, performed by the Brian Blade Fellowship Band.Do you have a music request? Send it to thesoundkitchen@rfi.frThis week's question ... you must listen to the show to participate. After you've listened to the show, re-read our article “French far-right leader Marine Le Pen on trial for misuse of EU funds”, which will help you with the answer.You have until 28 October to enter this week's quiz; the winners will be announced on the 2 November podcast. When you enter be sure to send your postal address with your answer, and if you have one, your RFI Listeners Club membership number.Send your answers to:english.service@rfi.frorSusan OwensbyRFI – The Sound Kitchen80, rue Camille Desmoulins92130 Issy-les-MoulineauxFranceorBy text … You can also send your quiz answers to The Sound Kitchen mobile phone. Dial your country's international access code, or “ + ”, then  33 6 31 12 96 82. Don't forget to include your mailing address in your text – and if you have one, your RFI Listeners Club membership number.Click here to learn how to win a special Sound Kitchen prize.Click here to find out how you can become a member of the RFI Listeners Club, or form your own official RFI Club,  

Os llevamos a 'El pasatiempo', un parque creador en el siglo XIX por los hermanos García Naveira en Betanzos. Cuando volvieron de hacer las américas construyeron un imponente y único jardín con voluntad de que fuera público: lleno de puentes, estatuas, cuevas, símbolos, árboles... Un jardín que se puede leer, pero que por desgracia está cerrado ahora mismo. Aunque hay un gran trabajo para que se recupere os lo contamos todo con nuestro jardinista Ignacio Somovilla, que acaba de inaugurar una colección de libros dedicada a jardines con historia o todas aquellas historias que tienen jardines en su haber. En Barcelona empieza ha empezado el Festival GREC con la actuación conjunta de Silvia Pérez Cruz, que interpreta su nuevo álbum, junto a grandes artistas como Damian Rice o Carmen Linares. Seguimos en el Glastonbury, uno de los festival de indie y rock más importantes del mundo. Terminamos con Martín Llade y una selección de música influenciada por el jazz y la música brasileña, composiciones dominados por la politonalidad y una figura clave: Darius Milhaud.Escuchar audio

Une secousse, une deuxième, puis une troisième. Après 1000, ils ont arrêté de compter

- Na zaproszenie pani Elżbiety Pendereckiej podczas Festiwalu Ludwiga van Beethovena co roku z Filharmonią Poznańską prezentujemy nieznane opery. Darius Milhaud to znany kompozytor, "Biedny marynarz" jest dostępny w nagraniach, lecz "Salade" nie miała tego szczęścia. To utwór, który zatonął w odmętach historii - mówił Łukasz Borowicz w przerwie koncertu w ramach 28. Wielkanocnego Festiwalu Ludwiga van Beethovena, którego słuchaliśmy na antenie Dwójki.

durée : 01:28:22 - En pistes ! du mardi 19 mars 2024 - par : Emilie Munera, Rodolphe Bruneau Boulmier - Emilie et Rodolphe vous proposent d'entendre ce matin les œuvres de Mozart, Mendelssohn, Tchaïkovski et Brahms, mais également celles de Respighi, Haydn et Bach, sans oublier le compositeur français Darius Milhaud. En pistes !

durée : 00:58:43 - Avec philosophie - par : Géraldine Muhlmann - Une fois le tragique de la vie admis, que nous reste-t-il ? Une forme de jubilation est possible, voire nécessaire, nous répond Clément Rosset, dont la philosophie s'inspire grandement de Nietzsche et en un sens de Schopenhauer. - invités : Santiago Espinoza Professeur de philosophie en classe préparatoire, traducteur des livres de Clément Rosset du français vers l'espagnol; Stéphane Floccari Professeur agrégé de philosophie au lycée Marcelin Berthelot, à Saint-Maur-des Fossés, et à l'INSEP; Christophe Salaün Professeur de philosophie au lycée au lycée Darius Milhaud au Kremlin-Bicêtre

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SynopsisT.J. Anderson was the first Black composer to hold the title of composer-in-residence with an American symphony orchestra. That was in Atlanta, when Robert Shaw was the music director of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. For Atlanta, Anderson orchestrated Scott Joplin's opera Treemonisha, resulting in the first full staging of that 1911 work, about 60 years after it was written, a performance that was broadcast on NPR in 1972. In addition to orchestrating Joplin's opera, Anderson wrote a few of his own, including Soldier Boy and Walker, which was based on the life of David Walker, an anti-slavery activist.One of Anderson's concert works, Squares, was premiered on today's date in 1966 by the Oklahoma Symphony and later recorded by the Baltimore Symphony for inclusion in a now-classic set of recordings issued by Columbia Records in 1970, The Black Composer Series.Squares is abstract and modernist, perhaps reflecting Anderson's academic background of composition studies at the esteemed Cincinnati Conservatory of Music and with French composer Darius Milhaud at the Aspen School of Music. Before his retirement in 1990, Anderson also taught composition at several universities from Massachusetts to California.Music Played in Today's ProgramT.J. Anderson (b. 1928): Squares (Baltimore Symphony, Paul Freeman, cond.) Sony 86215

durée : 00:20:10 - Les Nuits de France Culture - par : Albane Penaranda - En 1953, le compositeur Francis Poulenc se souvient de la création du groupe des Six en 1916. Georges Auric, Louis Durey, Arthur Honegger, Germaine Tailleferre, Darius Milhaud et lui-même forment un groupe qui est un véritable renouveau dans la musique française, sous le patronage d'Erik Satie. - invités : Francis Poulenc Compositeur et pianiste français

durée : 00:31:08 - Les Nuits de France Culture - par : Albane Penaranda - Cette émission « Plein feu sur les spectacles du monde » diffusée en 1958 est un portrait croisé de Francis Poulenc, par son ami compositeur Darius Milhaud, le musicologue Claude Rostand, le journaliste Roger Régent, Francis Poulenc lui-même… et les mots élogieux de Colette. - invités : Francis Poulenc Compositeur et pianiste français; Darius Milhaud Compositeur français (1892, Aix-en-Provence – 1974, Genève)

SynopsisToday's date marks the birthday in 1937 of American composer Robert Moran. A native of Denver, he studied in Berkley with Darius Milhaud and Luciano Berio and in Vienna with Hans Apostel, a pupil of Schoenberg and Berg.It was in Vienna that Moran overheard an unfamiliar waltz and was surprised to learn that Austrian composers were still writing them. Intrigued, he wrote one himself and asked 24 other contemporary composers to write more for The Waltz Project, a collection recorded as a Nonesuch LP in 1980 and later choreographed by the New York City Ballet.Moran's catalog of works includes the choral setting Winni Ille Pu (a classical Latin translation of Winnie the Pooh) and Lunchbag Opera, scored for performers hidden in adult-size brown lunch bags, each armed with toy noise-makers to be played while strolling through — according to Moran's instructions — “any important financial district or banking center at lunch time.”One of Moran's large-scale works, The Game of the Antichrist from 2012, is based on a medieval mystery play from Bavaria. It's scored for children's chorus, adult vocalists, organ and a small ensemble that includes an alpine horn and cocktail bar piano.Music Played in Today's ProgramRobert Moran (b. 1937) Waltz in Memoriam Maurice Ravel; Yvar Mikhashoff, p. Nonesuch LP D-79011 (out of print)Robert Moran (b. 1937) Finale: Banishment of the Antichrist, from Game of the Antichrist Children's Chorus of Gemeinde Vaterstetten; Vocal Ensemble Chrismos; Alexander Hermann, cond. Innova CD 251

Dans ce nouvel épisode de Plongeon, l'océanographe Cédric Cotté nous emmène en mer Méditerranée à la rencontre du rorqual commun, deuxième plus grand mammifère au monde après la baleine bleue ! Ça méritait bien un épisode ;) Objectif : poser des balises sur ces rorquals communs pour observer leurs trajectoires et mieux les comprendre.  Avec Simon, élève de Seconde, et la journaliste Margaux Bédé, Cédric Cotté vous embarque sur un catamaran pendant 3 semaines.  Vous allez vivre cette mission sous toutes ses formes, de la pose des balises, aux nuits raccourcies en passant par la corvée de cuisine !  Autour d'un chocolat chaud, on va aussi parler du trafic maritime, première cause de mortalité non naturelle des cétacés. L'épisode 14 de Plongeon, le podcast immersif de l'océan est disponible sur toutes les plateformes d'écoute !  Plongeon est un podcast soutenu par la Fondation 1 Ocean (sous l'égide du CNRS), il est développé en son 3D avec la société new-yorkaise Q Department, il est enregistré dans les locaux de Gobelins Paris et c'est le lycée Darius Milhaud qui nous accompagne toute cette saison. Un podcast immersif, pédagogique et environnemental hors norme. 

durée : 00:15:57 - Les Nuits de France Culture - par : Albane Penaranda - La compositrice Germaine Tailleferre se racontait en dix entretiens en 1975. Dans le quatrième volet, elle se souvient de sa rencontre avec Erik Satie, Maurice Ravel et de la constitution du Groupe des Six avec Darius Milhaud, Arthur Honegger, Georges Auric, Louis Durey et Francis Poulenc.

Dans La Matinale de ce jour (férié), animée par Théo Monteil, nous accueillons, dans une première interview Zoom, la Compagnie Vogel. Dans un échange mené par Anas Ilou, la compagnie nous présente sa nouvelle création Extinction 2.0, jouée jusqu'au 16 novembre, au théâtre Darius Milhaud ! Ensuite, dans une seconde interview Zoom, Sayeh Bouchouicha reçoit ( à distance) deux invitées en lien avec le festival des Gros Maux : Orane Lamas, référente appui technique et plaidoyer sur les sujets de santé environnement et de mal-logement chez Médecins du Monde, et l'artiste Kashink ! Le festival des Gros Maux a lieu les 3, 4, 5 novembre, au Ground Control dans le 12ème arrondissement ! Pour agrémenter cette émission en ce jour férié, nous laissons nos bénévoles prendre la parole dans une libre antenne, à propos de divers sujets, plus ou moins actuels ! Présentation : Théo Monteil / Zooms : Anas Ilou et Sayeh Bouchouicha / Libre antenne : Théo Monteil, Lucas Corroy, Pierre Yarid, Sayeh Bouchouicha, Clément L'Hôte et Héloïse Robert / Réalisation : Clément L'Hôte / Coordination : Héloïse Robert

durée : 01:28:38 - En pistes ! du mercredi 25 octobre 2023 - par : Emilie Munera, Rodolphe Bruneau Boulmier - Au programme de ce mercredi, des artistes de talent dans le Concerto pour piano n°1 de Chostakovitch, Les Nuits d'été de Berlioz, le Catalogue de fleurs de Darius Milhaud, mais aussi le Concerto pour la main gauche de Ravel. En pistes !

Episode 168 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “I Say a Little Prayer”, and the interaction of the sacred, political, and secular in Aretha Franklin's life and work. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a forty-five-minute bonus episode available, on "Abraham, Martin, and John" by Dion. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Resources No Mixcloud this week, as there are too many songs by Aretha Franklin. Even splitting it into multiple parts would have required six or seven mixes. My main biographical source for Aretha Franklin is Respect: The Life of Aretha Franklin by David Ritz, and this is where most of the quotes from musicians come from. Information on C.L. Franklin came from Singing in a Strange Land: C. L. Franklin, the Black Church, and the Transformation of America by Nick Salvatore. Country Soul by Charles L Hughes is a great overview of the soul music made in Muscle Shoals, Memphis, and Nashville in the sixties. Peter Guralnick's Sweet Soul Music: Rhythm And Blues And The Southern Dream Of Freedom is possibly less essential, but still definitely worth reading. Information about Martin Luther King came from Martin Luther King: A Religious Life by Paul Harvey. I also referred to Burt Bacharach's autobiography Anyone Who Had a Heart, Carole King's autobiography A Natural Woman, and Soul Serenade: King Curtis and his Immortal Saxophone by Timothy R. Hoover. For information about Amazing Grace I also used Aaron Cohen's 33 1/3 book on the album. The film of the concerts is also definitely worth watching. And the Aretha Now album is available in this five-album box set for a ludicrously cheap price. But it's actually worth getting this nineteen-CD set with her first sixteen Atlantic albums and a couple of bonus discs of demos and outtakes. There's barely a duff track in the whole nineteen discs. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript A quick warning before I begin. This episode contains some moderate references to domestic abuse, death by cancer, racial violence, police violence, and political assassination. Anyone who might be upset by those subjects might want to check the transcript rather than listening to the episode. Also, as with the previous episode on Aretha Franklin, this episode presents something of a problem. Like many people in this narrative, Franklin's career was affected by personal troubles, which shaped many of her decisions. But where most of the subjects of the podcast have chosen to live their lives in public and share intimate details of every aspect of their personal lives, Franklin was an extremely private person, who chose to share only carefully sanitised versions of her life, and tried as far as possible to keep things to herself. This of course presents a dilemma for anyone who wants to tell her story -- because even though the information is out there in biographies, and even though she's dead, it's not right to disrespect someone's wish for a private life. I have therefore tried, wherever possible, to stay away from talk of her personal life except where it *absolutely* affects the work, or where other people involved have publicly shared their own stories, and even there I've tried to keep it to a minimum. This will occasionally lead to me saying less about some topics than other people might, even though the information is easily findable, because I don't think we have an absolute right to invade someone else's privacy for entertainment. When we left Aretha Franklin, she had just finally broken through into the mainstream after a decade of performing, with a version of Otis Redding's song "Respect" on which she had been backed by her sisters, Erma and Carolyn. "Respect", in Franklin's interpretation, had been turned from a rather chauvinist song about a man demanding respect from his woman into an anthem of feminism, of Black power, and of a new political awakening. For white people of a certain generation, the summer of 1967 was "the summer of love". For many Black people, it was rather different. There's a quote that goes around (I've seen it credited in reliable sources to both Ebony and Jet magazine, but not ever seen an issue cited, so I can't say for sure where it came from) saying that the summer of 67 was the summer of "'retha, Rap, and revolt", referring to the trifecta of Aretha Franklin, the Black power leader Jamil Abdullah al-Amin (who was at the time known as H. Rap Brown, a name he later disclaimed) and the rioting that broke out in several major cities, particularly in Detroit: [Excerpt: John Lee Hooker, "The Motor City is Burning"] The mid sixties were, in many ways, the high point not of Black rights in the US -- for the most part there has been a lot of progress in civil rights in the intervening decades, though not without inevitable setbacks and attacks from the far right, and as movements like the Black Lives Matter movement have shown there is still a long way to go -- but of *hope* for Black rights. The moral force of the arguments made by the civil rights movement were starting to cause real change to happen for Black people in the US for the first time since the Reconstruction nearly a century before. But those changes weren't happening fast enough, and as we heard in the episode on "I Was Made to Love Her", there was not only a growing unrest among Black people, but a recognition that it was actually possible for things to change. A combination of hope and frustration can be a powerful catalyst, and whether Franklin wanted it or not, she was at the centre of things, both because of her newfound prominence as a star with a hit single that couldn't be interpreted as anything other than a political statement and because of her intimate family connections to the struggle. Even the most racist of white people these days pays lip service to the memory of Dr Martin Luther King, and when they do they quote just a handful of sentences from one speech King made in 1963, as if that sums up the full theological and political philosophy of that most complex of men. And as we discussed the last time we looked at Aretha Franklin, King gave versions of that speech, the "I Have a Dream" speech, twice. The most famous version was at the March on Washington, but the first time was a few weeks earlier, at what was at the time the largest civil rights demonstration in American history, in Detroit. Aretha's family connection to that event is made clear by the very opening of King's speech: [Excerpt: Martin Luther King, "Original 'I Have a Dream' Speech"] So as summer 1967 got into swing, and white rock music was going to San Francisco to wear flowers in its hair, Aretha Franklin was at the centre of a very different kind of youth revolution. Franklin's second Atlantic album, Aretha Arrives, brought in some new personnel to the team that had recorded Aretha's first album for Atlantic. Along with the core Muscle Shoals players Jimmy Johnson, Spooner Oldham, Tommy Cogbill and Roger Hawkins, and a horn section led by King Curtis, Wexler and Dowd also brought in guitarist Joe South. South was a white session player from Georgia, who had had a few minor hits himself in the fifties -- he'd got his start recording a cover version of "The Purple People Eater Meets the Witch Doctor", the Big Bopper's B-side to "Chantilly Lace": [Excerpt: Joe South, "The Purple People Eater Meets the Witch Doctor"] He'd also written a few songs that had been recorded by people like Gene Vincent, but he'd mostly become a session player. He'd become a favourite musician of Bob Johnston's, and so he'd played guitar on Simon and Garfunkel's Sounds of Silence and Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme albums: [Excerpt: Simon and Garfunkel, "I am a Rock"] and bass on Bob Dylan's Blonde on Blonde, with Al Kooper particularly praising his playing on "Visions of Johanna": [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Visions of Johanna"] South would be the principal guitarist on this and Franklin's next album, before his own career took off in 1968 with "Games People Play": [Excerpt: Joe South, "Games People Play"] At this point, he had already written the other song he's best known for, "Hush", which later became a hit for Deep Purple: [Excerpt: Deep Purple, "Hush"] But he wasn't very well known, and was surprised to get the call for the Aretha Franklin session, especially because, as he put it "I was white and I was about to play behind the blackest genius since Ray Charles" But Jerry Wexler had told him that Franklin didn't care about the race of the musicians she played with, and South settled in as soon as Franklin smiled at him when he played a good guitar lick on her version of the blues standard "Going Down Slow": [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Going Down Slow"] That was one of the few times Franklin smiled in those sessions though. Becoming an overnight success after years of trying and failing to make a name for herself had been a disorienting experience, and on top of that things weren't going well in her personal life. Her marriage to her manager Ted White was falling apart, and she was performing erratically thanks to the stress. In particular, at a gig in Georgia she had fallen off the stage and broken her arm. She soon returned to performing, but it meant she had problems with her right arm during the recording of the album, and didn't play as much piano as she would have previously -- on some of the faster songs she played only with her left hand. But the recording sessions had to go on, whether or not Aretha was physically capable of playing piano. As we discussed in the episode on Otis Redding, the owners of Atlantic Records were busily negotiating its sale to Warner Brothers in mid-1967. As Wexler said later “Everything in me said, Keep rolling, keep recording, keep the hits coming. She was red hot and I had no reason to believe that the streak wouldn't continue. I knew that it would be foolish—and even irresponsible—not to strike when the iron was hot. I also had personal motivation. A Wall Street financier had agreed to see what we could get for Atlantic Records. While Ahmet and Neshui had not agreed on a selling price, they had gone along with my plan to let the financier test our worth on the open market. I was always eager to pump out hits, but at this moment I was on overdrive. In this instance, I had a good partner in Ted White, who felt the same. He wanted as much product out there as possible." In truth, you can tell from Aretha Arrives that it's a record that was being thought of as "product" rather than one being made out of any kind of artistic impulse. It's a fine album -- in her ten-album run from I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You through Amazing Grace there's not a bad album and barely a bad track -- but there's a lack of focus. There are only two originals on the album, neither of them written by Franklin herself, and the rest is an incoherent set of songs that show the tension between Franklin and her producers at Atlantic. Several songs are the kind of standards that Franklin had recorded for her old label Columbia, things like "You Are My Sunshine", or her version of "That's Life", which had been a hit for Frank Sinatra the previous year: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "That's Life"] But mixed in with that are songs that are clearly the choice of Wexler. As we've discussed previously in episodes on Otis Redding and Wilson Pickett, at this point Atlantic had the idea that it was possible for soul artists to cross over into the white market by doing cover versions of white rock hits -- and indeed they'd had some success with that tactic. So while Franklin was suggesting Sinatra covers, Atlantic's hand is visible in the choices of songs like "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" and "96 Tears": [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "96 Tears'] Of the two originals on the album, one, the hit single "Baby I Love You" was written by Ronnie Shannon, the Detroit songwriter who had previously written "I Never Loved a Man (the Way I Love You)": [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Baby I Love You"] As with the previous album, and several other songs on this one, that had backing vocals by Aretha's sisters, Erma and Carolyn. But the other original on the album, "Ain't Nobody (Gonna Turn Me Around)", didn't, even though it was written by Carolyn: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Ain't Nobody (Gonna Turn Me Around)"] To explain why, let's take a little detour and look at the co-writer of the song this episode is about, though we're not going to get to that for a little while yet. We've not talked much about Burt Bacharach in this series so far, but he's one of those figures who has come up a few times in the periphery and will come up again, so here is as good a time as any to discuss him, and bring everyone up to speed about his career up to 1967. Bacharach was one of the more privileged figures in the sixties pop music field. His father, Bert Bacharach (pronounced the same as his son, but spelled with an e rather than a u) had been a famous newspaper columnist, and his parents had bought him a Steinway grand piano to practice on -- they pushed him to learn the piano even though as a kid he wasn't interested in finger exercises and Debussy. What he was interested in, though, was jazz, and as a teenager he would often go into Manhattan and use a fake ID to see people like Dizzy Gillespie, who he idolised, and in his autobiography he talks rapturously of seeing Gillespie playing his bent trumpet -- he once saw Gillespie standing on a street corner with a pet monkey on his shoulder, and went home and tried to persuade his parents to buy him a monkey too. In particular, he talks about seeing the Count Basie band with Sonny Payne on drums as a teenager: [Excerpt: Count Basie, "Kid From Red Bank"] He saw them at Birdland, the club owned by Morris Levy where they would regularly play, and said of the performance "they were just so incredibly exciting that all of a sudden, I got into music in a way I never had before. What I heard in those clubs really turned my head around— it was like a big breath of fresh air when somebody throws open a window. That was when I knew for the first time how much I loved music and wanted to be connected to it in some way." Of course, there's a rather major problem with this story, as there is so often with narratives that musicians tell about their early career. In this case, Birdland didn't open until 1949, when Bacharach was twenty-one and stationed in Germany for his military service, while Sonny Payne didn't join Basie's band until 1954, when Bacharach had been a professional musician for many years. Also Dizzy Gillespie's trumpet bell only got bent on January 6, 1953. But presumably while Bacharach was conflating several memories, he did have some experience in some New York jazz club that led him to want to become a musician. Certainly there were enough great jazz musicians playing the clubs in those days. He went to McGill University to study music for two years, then went to study with Darius Milhaud, a hugely respected modernist composer. Milhaud was also one of the most important music teachers of the time -- among others he'd taught Stockhausen and Xenakkis, and would go on to teach Philip Glass and Steve Reich. This suited Bacharach, who by this point was a big fan of Schoenberg and Webern, and was trying to write atonal, difficult music. But Milhaud had also taught Dave Brubeck, and when Bacharach rather shamefacedly presented him with a composition which had an actual tune, he told Bacharach "Never be ashamed of writing a tune you can whistle". He dropped out of university and, like most men of his generation, had to serve in the armed forces. When he got out of the army, he continued his musical studies, still trying to learn to be an avant-garde composer, this time with Bohuslav Martinů and later with Henry Cowell, the experimental composer we've heard about quite a bit in previous episodes: [Excerpt: Henry Cowell, "Aeolian Harp and Sinister Resonance"] He was still listening to a lot of avant garde music, and would continue doing so throughout the fifties, going to see people like John Cage. But he spent much of that time working in music that was very different from the avant-garde. He got a job as the band leader for the crooner Vic Damone: [Excerpt: Vic Damone. "Ebb Tide"] He also played for the vocal group the Ames Brothers. He decided while he was working with the Ames Brothers that he could write better material than they were getting from their publishers, and that it would be better to have a job where he didn't have to travel, so he got himself a job as a staff songwriter in the Brill Building. He wrote a string of flops and nearly hits, starting with "Keep Me In Mind" for Patti Page: [Excerpt: Patti Page, "Keep Me In Mind"] From early in his career he worked with the lyricist Hal David, and the two of them together wrote two big hits, "Magic Moments" for Perry Como: [Excerpt: Perry Como, "Magic Moments"] and "The Story of My Life" for Marty Robbins: [Excerpt: "The Story of My Life"] But at that point Bacharach was still also writing with other writers, notably Hal David's brother Mack, with whom he wrote the theme tune to the film The Blob, as performed by The Five Blobs: [Excerpt: The Five Blobs, "The Blob"] But Bacharach's songwriting career wasn't taking off, and he got himself a job as musical director for Marlene Dietrich -- a job he kept even after it did start to take off.  Part of the problem was that he intuitively wrote music that didn't quite fit into standard structures -- there would be odd bars of unusual time signatures thrown in, unusual harmonies, and structural irregularities -- but then he'd take feedback from publishers and producers who would tell him the song could only be recorded if he straightened it out. He said later "The truth is that I ruined a lot of songs by not believing in myself enough to tell these guys they were wrong." He started writing songs for Scepter Records, usually with Hal David, but also with Bob Hilliard and Mack David, and started having R&B hits. One song he wrote with Mack David, "I'll Cherish You", had the lyrics rewritten by Luther Dixon to make them more harsh-sounding for a Shirelles single -- but the single was otherwise just Bacharach's demo with the vocals replaced, and you can even hear his voice briefly at the beginning: [Excerpt: The Shirelles, "Baby, It's You"] But he'd also started becoming interested in the production side of records more generally. He'd iced that some producers, when recording his songs, would change the sound for the worse -- he thought Gene McDaniels' version of "Tower of Strength", for example, was too fast. But on the other hand, other producers got a better sound than he'd heard in his head. He and Hilliard had written a song called "Please Stay", which they'd given to Leiber and Stoller to record with the Drifters, and he thought that their arrangement of the song was much better than the one he'd originally thought up: [Excerpt: The Drifters, "Please Stay"] He asked Leiber and Stoller if he could attend all their New York sessions and learn about record production from them. He started doing so, and eventually they started asking him to assist them on records. He and Hilliard wrote a song called "Mexican Divorce" for the Drifters, which Leiber and Stoller were going to produce, and as he put it "they were so busy running Redbird Records that they asked me to rehearse the background singers for them in my office." [Excerpt: The Drifters, "Mexican Divorce"] The backing singers who had been brought in to augment the Drifters on that record were a group of vocalists who had started out as members of a gospel group called the Drinkard singers: [Excerpt: The Drinkard Singers, "Singing in My Soul"] The Drinkard Singers had originally been a family group, whose members included Cissy Drinkard, who joined the group aged five (and who on her marriage would become known as Cissy Houston -- her daughter Whitney would later join the family business), her aunt Lee Warrick, and Warrick's adopted daughter Judy Clay. That group were discovered by the great gospel singer Mahalia Jackson, and spent much of the fifties performing with gospel greats including Jackson herself, Clara Ward, and Sister Rosetta Tharpe. But Houston was also the musical director of a group at her church, the Gospelaires, which featured Lee Warrick's two daughters Dionne and Dee Dee Warwick (for those who don't know, the Warwick sisters' birth name was Warrick, spelled with two rs. A printing error led to it being misspelled the same way as the British city on a record label, and from that point on Dionne at least pronounced the w in her misspelled name). And slowly, the Gospelaires rather than the Drinkard Singers became the focus, with a lineup of Houston, the Warwick sisters, the Warwick sisters' cousin Doris Troy, and Clay's sister Sylvia Shemwell. The real change in the group's fortunes came when, as we talked about a while back in the episode on "The Loco-Motion", the original lineup of the Cookies largely stopped working as session singers to become Ray Charles' Raelettes. As we discussed in that episode, a new lineup of Cookies formed in 1961, but it took a while for them to get started, and in the meantime the producers who had been relying on them for backing vocals were looking elsewhere, and they looked to the Gospelaires. "Mexican Divorce" was the first record to feature the group as backing vocalists -- though reports vary as to how many of them are on the record, with some saying it's only Troy and the Warwicks, others saying Houston was there, and yet others saying it was all five of them. Some of these discrepancies were because these singers were so good that many of them left to become solo singers in fairly short order. Troy was the first to do so, with her hit "Just One Look", on which the other Gospelaires sang backing vocals: [Excerpt: Doris Troy, "Just One Look"] But the next one to go solo was Dionne Warwick, and that was because she'd started working with Bacharach and Hal David as their principal demo singer. She started singing lead on their demos, and hoping that she'd get to release them on her own. One early one was "Make it Easy On Yourself", which was recorded by Jerry Butler, formerly of the Impressions. That record was produced by Bacharach, one of the first records he produced without outside supervision: [Excerpt: Jerry Butler, "Make it Easy On Yourself"] Warwick was very jealous that a song she'd sung the demo of had become a massive hit for someone else, and blamed Bacharach and David. The way she tells the story -- Bacharach always claimed this never happened, but as we've already seen he was himself not always the most reliable of narrators of his own life -- she got so angry she complained to them, and said "Don't make me over, man!" And so Bacharach and David wrote her this: [Excerpt: Dionne Warwick, "Don't Make Me Over"] Incidentally, in the UK, the hit version of that was a cover by the Swinging Blue Jeans: [Excerpt: The Swinging Blue Jeans, "Don't Make Me Over"] who also had a huge hit with "You're No Good": [Excerpt: The Swinging Blue Jeans, "You're No Good"] And *that* was originally recorded by *Dee Dee* Warwick: [Excerpt: Dee Dee Warwick, "You're No Good"] Dee Dee also had a successful solo career, but Dionne's was the real success, making the names of herself, and of Bacharach and David. The team had more than twenty top forty hits together, before Bacharach and David had a falling out in 1971 and stopped working together, and Warwick sued both of them for breach of contract as a result. But prior to that they had hit after hit, with classic records like "Anyone Who Had a Heart": [Excerpt: Dionne Warwick, "Anyone Who Had a Heart"] And "Walk On By": [Excerpt: Dionne Warwick, "Walk On By"] With Doris, Dionne, and Dee Dee all going solo, the group's membership was naturally in flux -- though the departed members would occasionally join their former bandmates for sessions, and the remaining members would sing backing vocals on their ex-members' records. By 1965 the group consisted of Cissy Houston, Sylvia Shemwell, the Warwick sisters' cousin Myrna Smith, and Estelle Brown. The group became *the* go-to singers for soul and R&B records made in New York. They were regularly hired by Leiber and Stoller to sing on their records, and they were also the particular favourites of Bert Berns. They sang backing vocals on almost every record he produced. It's them doing the gospel wails on "Cry Baby" by Garnet Mimms: [Excerpt: Garnet Mimms, "Cry Baby"] And they sang backing vocals on both versions of "If You Need Me" -- Wilson Pickett's original and Solomon Burke's more successful cover version, produced by Berns: [Excerpt: Solomon Burke, "If You Need Me"] They're on such Berns records as "Show Me Your Monkey", by Kenny Hamber: [Excerpt: Kenny Hamber, "Show Me Your Monkey"] And it was a Berns production that ended up getting them to be Aretha Franklin's backing group. The group were becoming such an important part of the records that Atlantic and BANG Records, in particular, were putting out, that Jerry Wexler said "it was only a matter of common decency to put them under contract as a featured group". He signed them to Atlantic and renamed them from the Gospelaires to The Sweet Inspirations.  Dan Penn and Spooner Oldham wrote a song for the group which became their only hit under their own name: [Excerpt: The Sweet Inspirations, "Sweet Inspiration"] But to start with, they released a cover of Pops Staples' civil rights song "Why (Am I treated So Bad)": [Excerpt: The Sweet Inspirations, "Why (Am I Treated So Bad?)"] That hadn't charted, and meanwhile, they'd all kept doing session work. Cissy had joined Erma and Carolyn Franklin on the backing vocals for Aretha's "I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You": [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You"] Shortly after that, the whole group recorded backing vocals for Erma's single "Piece of My Heart", co-written and produced by Berns: [Excerpt: Erma Franklin, "Piece of My Heart"] That became a top ten record on the R&B charts, but that caused problems. Aretha Franklin had a few character flaws, and one of these was an extreme level of jealousy for any other female singer who had any level of success and came up in the business after her. She could be incredibly graceful towards anyone who had been successful before her -- she once gave one of her Grammies away to Esther Phillips, who had been up for the same award and had lost to her -- but she was terribly insecure, and saw any contemporary as a threat. She'd spent her time at Columbia Records fuming (with some justification) that Barbra Streisand was being given a much bigger marketing budget than her, and she saw Diana Ross, Gladys Knight, and Dionne Warwick as rivals rather than friends. And that went doubly for her sisters, who she was convinced should be supporting her because of family loyalty. She had been infuriated at John Hammond when Columbia had signed Erma, thinking he'd gone behind her back to create competition for her. And now Erma was recording with Bert Berns. Bert Berns who had for years been a colleague of Jerry Wexler and the Ertegun brothers at Atlantic. Aretha was convinced that Wexler had put Berns up to signing Erma as some kind of power play. There was only one problem with this -- it simply wasn't true. As Wexler later explained “Bert and I had suffered a bad falling-out, even though I had enormous respect for him. After all, he was the guy who brought over guitarist Jimmy Page from England to play on our sessions. Bert, Ahmet, Nesuhi, and I had started a label together—Bang!—where Bert produced Van Morrison's first album. But Bert also had a penchant for trouble. He courted the wise guys. He wanted total control over every last aspect of our business dealings. Finally it was too much, and the Erteguns and I let him go. He sued us for breach of contract and suddenly we were enemies. I felt that he signed Erma, an excellent singer, not merely for her talent but as a way to get back at me. If I could make a hit with Aretha, he'd show me up by making an even bigger hit on Erma. Because there was always an undercurrent of rivalry between the sisters, this only added to the tension.” There were two things that resulted from this paranoia on Aretha's part. The first was that she and Wexler, who had been on first-name terms up to that point, temporarily went back to being "Mr. Wexler" and "Miss Franklin" to each other. And the second was that Aretha no longer wanted Carolyn and Erma to be her main backing vocalists, though they would continue to appear on her future records on occasion. From this point on, the Sweet Inspirations would be the main backing vocalists for Aretha in the studio throughout her golden era [xxcut line (and when the Sweet Inspirations themselves weren't on the record, often it would be former members of the group taking their place)]: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Ain't Nobody (Gonna Turn Me Around)"] The last day of sessions for Aretha Arrives was July the twenty-third, 1967. And as we heard in the episode on "I Was Made to Love Her", that was the day that the Detroit riots started. To recap briefly, that was four days of rioting started because of a history of racist policing, made worse by those same racist police overreacting to the initial protests. By the end of those four days, the National Guard, 82nd Airborne Division, and the 101st Airborne from Clarksville were all called in to deal with the violence, which left forty-three dead (of whom thirty-three were Black and only one was a police officer), 1,189 people were injured, and over 7,200 arrested, almost all of them Black. Those days in July would be a turning point for almost every musician based in Detroit. In particular, the police had murdered three members of the soul group the Dramatics, in a massacre of which the author John Hersey, who had been asked by President Johnson to be part of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders but had decided that would compromise his impartiality and did an independent journalistic investigation, said "The episode contained all the mythic themes of racial strife in the United States: the arm of the law taking the law into its own hands; interracial sex; the subtle poison of racist thinking by “decent” men who deny they are racists; the societal limbo into which, ever since slavery, so many young black men have been driven by our country; ambiguous justice in the courts; and the devastation in both black and white human lives that follows in the wake of violence as surely as ruinous and indiscriminate flood after torrents" But these were also the events that radicalised the MC5 -- the group had been playing a gig as Tim Buckley's support act when the rioting started, and guitarist Wayne Kramer decided afterwards to get stoned and watch the fires burning down the city through a telescope -- which police mistook for a rifle, leading to the National Guard knocking down Kramer's door. The MC5 would later cover "The Motor City is Burning", John Lee Hooker's song about the events: [Excerpt: The MC5, "The Motor City is Burning"] It would also be a turning point for Motown, too, in ways we'll talk about in a few future episodes.  And it was a political turning point too -- Michigan Governor George Romney, a liberal Republican (at a time when such people existed) had been the favourite for the Republican Presidential candidacy when he'd entered the race in December 1966, but as racial tensions ramped up in Detroit during the early months of 1967 he'd started trailing Richard Nixon, a man who was consciously stoking racists' fears. President Johnson, the incumbent Democrat, who was at that point still considering standing for re-election, made sure to make it clear to everyone during the riots that the decision to call in the National Guard had been made at the State level, by Romney, rather than at the Federal level.  That wasn't the only thing that removed the possibility of a Romney presidency, but it was a big part of the collapse of his campaign, and the, as it turned out, irrevocable turn towards right-authoritarianism that the party took with Nixon's Southern Strategy. Of course, Aretha Franklin had little way of knowing what was to come and how the riots would change the city and the country over the following decades. What she was primarily concerned about was the safety of her father, and to a lesser extent that of her sister-in-law Earline who was staying with him. Aretha, Carolyn, and Erma all tried to keep in constant touch with their father while they were out of town, and Aretha even talked about hiring private detectives to travel to Detroit, find her father, and get him out of the city to safety. But as her brother Cecil pointed out, he was probably the single most loved man among Black people in Detroit, and was unlikely to be harmed by the rioters, while he was too famous for the police to kill with impunity. Reverend Franklin had been having a stressful time anyway -- he had recently been fined for tax evasion, an action he was convinced the IRS had taken because of his friendship with Dr King and his role in the civil rights movement -- and according to Cecil "Aretha begged Daddy to move out of the city entirely. She wanted him to find another congregation in California, where he was especially popular—or at least move out to the suburbs. But he wouldn't budge. He said that, more than ever, he was needed to point out the root causes of the riots—the economic inequality, the pervasive racism in civic institutions, the woefully inadequate schools in inner-city Detroit, and the wholesale destruction of our neighborhoods by urban renewal. Some ministers fled the city, but not our father. The horror of what happened only recommitted him. He would not abandon his political agenda." To make things worse, Aretha was worried about her father in other ways -- as her marriage to Ted White was starting to disintegrate, she was looking to her father for guidance, and actually wanted him to take over her management. Eventually, Ruth Bowen, her booking agent, persuaded her brother Cecil that this was a job he could do, and that she would teach him everything he needed to know about the music business. She started training him up while Aretha was still married to White, in the expectation that that marriage couldn't last. Jerry Wexler, who only a few months earlier had been seeing Ted White as an ally in getting "product" from Franklin, had now changed his tune -- partly because the sale of Atlantic had gone through in the meantime. He later said “Sometimes she'd call me at night, and, in that barely audible little-girl voice of hers, she'd tell me that she wasn't sure she could go on. She always spoke in generalities. She never mentioned her husband, never gave me specifics of who was doing what to whom. And of course I knew better than to ask. She just said that she was tired of dealing with so much. My heart went out to her. She was a woman who suffered silently. She held so much in. I'd tell her to take as much time off as she needed. We had a lot of songs in the can that we could release without new material. ‘Oh, no, Jerry,' she'd say. ‘I can't stop recording. I've written some new songs, Carolyn's written some new songs. We gotta get in there and cut 'em.' ‘Are you sure?' I'd ask. ‘Positive,' she'd say. I'd set up the dates and typically she wouldn't show up for the first or second sessions. Carolyn or Erma would call me to say, ‘Ree's under the weather.' That was tough because we'd have asked people like Joe South and Bobby Womack to play on the sessions. Then I'd reschedule in the hopes she'd show." That third album she recorded in 1967, Lady Soul, was possibly her greatest achievement. The opening track, and second single, "Chain of Fools", released in November, was written by Don Covay -- or at least it's credited as having been written by Covay. There's a gospel record that came out around the same time on a very small label based in Houston -- "Pains of Life" by Rev. E. Fair And The Sensational Gladys Davis Trio: [Excerpt: Rev. E. Fair And The Sensational Gladys Davis Trio, "Pains of Life"] I've seen various claims online that that record came out shortly *before* "Chain of Fools", but I can't find any definitive evidence one way or the other -- it was on such a small label that release dates aren't available anywhere. Given that the B-side, which I haven't been able to track down online, is called "Wait Until the Midnight Hour", my guess is that rather than this being a case of Don Covay stealing the melody from an obscure gospel record he'd have had little chance to hear, it's the gospel record rewriting a then-current hit to be about religion, but I thought it worth mentioning. The song was actually written by Covay after Jerry Wexler asked him to come up with some songs for Otis Redding, but Wexler, after hearing it, decided it was better suited to Franklin, who gave an astonishing performance: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Chain of Fools"] Arif Mardin, the arranger of the album, said of that track “I was listed as the arranger of ‘Chain of Fools,' but I can't take credit. Aretha walked into the studio with the chart fully formed inside her head. The arrangement is based around the harmony vocals provided by Carolyn and Erma. To add heft, the Sweet Inspirations joined in. The vision of the song is entirely Aretha's.” According to Wexler, that's not *quite* true -- according to him, Joe South came up with the guitar part that makes up the intro, and he also said that when he played what he thought was the finished track to Ellie Greenwich, she came up with another vocal line for the backing vocals, which she overdubbed. But the core of the record's sound is definitely pure Aretha -- and Carolyn Franklin said that there was a reason for that. As she said later “Aretha didn't write ‘Chain,' but she might as well have. It was her story. When we were in the studio putting on the backgrounds with Ree doing lead, I knew she was singing about Ted. Listen to the lyrics talking about how for five long years she thought he was her man. Then she found out she was nothing but a link in the chain. Then she sings that her father told her to come on home. Well, he did. She sings about how her doctor said to take it easy. Well, he did too. She was drinking so much we thought she was on the verge of a breakdown. The line that slew me, though, was the one that said how one of these mornings the chain is gonna break but until then she'll take all she can take. That summed it up. Ree knew damn well that this man had been doggin' her since Jump Street. But somehow she held on and pushed it to the breaking point." [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Chain of Fools"] That made number one on the R&B charts, and number two on the hot one hundred, kept from the top by "Judy In Disguise (With Glasses)" by John Fred and his Playboy Band -- a record that very few people would say has stood the test of time as well. The other most memorable track on the album was the one chosen as the first single, released in September. As Carole King told the story, she and Gerry Goffin were feeling like their career was in a slump. While they had had a huge run of hits in the early sixties through 1965, they had only had two new hits in 1966 -- "Goin' Back" for Dusty Springfield and "Don't Bring Me Down" for the Animals, and neither of those were anything like as massive as their previous hits. And up to that point in 1967, they'd only had one -- "Pleasant Valley Sunday" for the Monkees. They had managed to place several songs on Monkees albums and the TV show as well, so they weren't going to starve, but the rise of self-contained bands that were starting to dominate the charts, and Phil Spector's temporary retirement, meant there simply wasn't the opportunity for them to place material that there had been. They were also getting sick of travelling to the West Coast all the time, because as their children were growing slightly older they didn't want to disrupt their lives in New York, and were thinking of approaching some of the New York based labels and seeing if they needed songs. They were particularly considering Atlantic, because soul was more open to outside songwriters than other genres. As it happened, though, they didn't have to approach Atlantic, because Atlantic approached them. They were walking down Broadway when a limousine pulled up, and Jerry Wexler stuck his head out of the window. He'd come up with a good title that he wanted to use for a song for Aretha, would they be interested in writing a song called "Natural Woman"? They said of course they would, and Wexler drove off. They wrote the song that night, and King recorded a demo the next morning: [Excerpt: Carole King, "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman (demo)"] They gave Wexler a co-writing credit because he had suggested the title.  King later wrote in her autobiography "Hearing Aretha's performance of “Natural Woman” for the first time, I experienced a rare speechless moment. To this day I can't convey how I felt in mere words. Anyone who had written a song in 1967 hoping it would be performed by a singer who could take it to the highest level of excellence, emotional connection, and public exposure would surely have wanted that singer to be Aretha Franklin." She went on to say "But a recording that moves people is never just about the artist and the songwriters. It's about people like Jerry and Ahmet, who matched the songwriters with a great title and a gifted artist; Arif Mardin, whose magnificent orchestral arrangement deserves the place it will forever occupy in popular music history; Tom Dowd, whose engineering skills captured the magic of this memorable musical moment for posterity; and the musicians in the rhythm section, the orchestral players, and the vocal contributions of the background singers—among them the unforgettable “Ah-oo!” after the first line of the verse. And the promotion and marketing people helped this song reach more people than it might have without them." And that's correct -- unlike "Chain of Fools", this time Franklin did let Arif Mardin do most of the arrangement work -- though she came up with the piano part that Spooner Oldham plays on the record. Mardin said that because of the song's hymn-like feel they wanted to go for a more traditional written arrangement. He said "She loved the song to the point where she said she wanted to concentrate on the vocal and vocal alone. I had written a string chart and horn chart to augment the chorus and hired Ralph Burns to conduct. After just a couple of takes, we had it. That's when Ralph turned to me with wonder in his eyes. Ralph was one of the most celebrated arrangers of the modern era. He had done ‘Early Autumn' for Woody Herman and Stan Getz, and ‘Georgia on My Mind' for Ray Charles. He'd worked with everyone. ‘This woman comes from another planet' was all Ralph said. ‘She's just here visiting.'” [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman"] By this point there was a well-functioning team making Franklin's records -- while the production credits would vary over the years, they were all essentially co-productions by the team of Franklin, Wexler, Mardin and Dowd, all collaborating and working together with a more-or-less unified purpose, and the backing was always by the same handful of session musicians and some combination of the Sweet Inspirations and Aretha's sisters. That didn't mean that occasional guests couldn't get involved -- as we discussed in the Cream episode, Eric Clapton played guitar on "Good to Me as I am to You": [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Good to Me as I am to You"] Though that was one of the rare occasions on one of these records where something was overdubbed. Clapton apparently messed up the guitar part when playing behind Franklin, because he was too intimidated by playing with her, and came back the next day to redo his part without her in the studio. At this point, Aretha was at the height of her fame. Just before the final batch of album sessions began she appeared in the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade, and she was making regular TV appearances, like one on the Mike Douglas Show where she duetted with Frankie Valli on "That's Life": [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin and Frankie Valli, "That's Life"] But also, as Wexler said “Her career was kicking into high gear. Contending and resolving both the professional and personal challenges were too much. She didn't think she could do both, and I didn't blame her. Few people could. So she let the personal slide and concentrated on the professional. " Her concert promoter Ruth Bowen said of this time "Her father and Dr. King were putting pressure on her to sing everywhere, and she felt obligated. The record company was also screaming for more product. And I had a mountain of offers on my desk that kept getting higher with every passing hour. They wanted her in Europe. They wanted her in Latin America. They wanted her in every major venue in the U.S. TV was calling. She was being asked to do guest appearances on every show from Carol Burnett to Andy Williams to the Hollywood Palace. She wanted to do them all and she wanted to do none of them. She wanted to do them all because she's an entertainer who burns with ambition. She wanted to do none of them because she was emotionally drained. She needed to go away and renew her strength. I told her that at least a dozen times. She said she would, but she didn't listen to me." The pressures from her father and Dr King are a recurring motif in interviews with people about this period. Franklin was always a very political person, and would throughout her life volunteer time and money to liberal political causes and to the Democratic Party, but this was the height of her activism -- the Civil Rights movement was trying to capitalise on the gains it had made in the previous couple of years, and celebrity fundraisers and performances at rallies were an important way to do that. And at this point there were few bigger celebrities in America than Aretha Franklin. At a concert in her home town of Detroit on February the sixteenth, 1968, the Mayor declared the day Aretha Franklin Day. At the same show, Billboard, Record World *and* Cash Box magazines all presented her with plaques for being Female Vocalist of the Year. And Dr. King travelled up to be at the show and congratulate her publicly for all her work with his organisation, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Backstage at that show, Dr. King talked to Aretha's father, Reverend Franklin, about what he believed would be the next big battle -- a strike in Memphis: [Excerpt, Martin Luther King, "Mountaintop Speech" -- "And so, as a result of this, we are asking you tonight, to go out and tell your neighbors not to buy Coca-Cola in Memphis. Go by and tell them not to buy Sealtest milk. Tell them not to buy—what is the other bread?—Wonder Bread. And what is the other bread company, Jesse? Tell them not to buy Hart's bread. As Jesse Jackson has said, up to now, only the garbage men have been feeling pain; now we must kind of redistribute the pain. We are choosing these companies because they haven't been fair in their hiring policies; and we are choosing them because they can begin the process of saying, they are going to support the needs and the rights of these men who are on strike. And then they can move on downtown and tell Mayor Loeb to do what is right."] The strike in question was the Memphis Sanitation Workers' strike which had started a few days before.  The struggle for Black labour rights was an integral part of the civil rights movement, and while it's not told that way in the sanitised version of the story that's made it into popular culture, the movement led by King was as much about economic justice as social justice -- King was a democratic socialist, and believed that economic oppression was both an effect of and cause of other forms of racial oppression, and that the rights of Black workers needed to be fought for. In 1967 he had set up a new organisation, the Poor People's Campaign, which was set to march on Washington to demand a program that included full employment, a guaranteed income -- King was strongly influenced in his later years by the ideas of Henry George, the proponent of a universal basic income based on land value tax -- the annual building of half a million affordable homes, and an end to the war in Vietnam. This was King's main focus in early 1968, and he saw the sanitation workers' strike as a major part of this campaign. Memphis was one of the most oppressive cities in the country, and its largely Black workforce of sanitation workers had been trying for most of the 1960s to unionise, and strike-breakers had been called in to stop them, and many of them had been fired by their white supervisors with no notice. They were working in unsafe conditions, for utterly inadequate wages, and the city government were ardent segregationists. After two workers had died on the first of February from using unsafe equipment, the union demanded changes -- safer working conditions, better wages, and recognition of the union. The city council refused, and almost all the sanitation workers stayed home and stopped work. After a few days, the council relented and agreed to their terms, but the Mayor, Henry Loeb, an ardent white supremacist who had stood on a platform of opposing desegregation, and who had previously been the Public Works Commissioner who had put these unsafe conditions in place, refused to listen. As far as he was concerned, he was the only one who could recognise the union, and he wouldn't. The workers continued their strike, marching holding signs that simply read "I am a Man": [Excerpt: Stevie Wonder, "Blowing in the Wind"] The Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the NAACP had been involved in organising support for the strikes from an early stage, and King visited Memphis many times. Much of the time he spent visiting there was spent negotiating with a group of more militant activists, who called themselves The Invaders and weren't completely convinced by King's nonviolent approach -- they believed that violence and rioting got more attention than non-violent protests. King explained to them that while he had been persuaded by Gandhi's writings of the moral case for nonviolent protest, he was also persuaded that it was pragmatically necessary -- asking the young men "how many guns do we have and how many guns do they have?", and pointing out as he often did that when it comes to violence a minority can't win against an armed majority. Rev Franklin went down to Memphis on the twenty-eighth of March to speak at a rally Dr. King was holding, but as it turned out the rally was cancelled -- the pre-rally march had got out of hand, with some people smashing windows, and Memphis police had, like the police in Detroit the previous year, violently overreacted, clubbing and gassing protestors and shooting and killing one unarmed teenage boy, Larry Payne. The day after Payne's funeral, Dr King was back in Memphis, though this time Rev Franklin was not with him. On April the third, he gave a speech which became known as the "Mountaintop Speech", in which he talked about the threats that had been made to his life: [Excerpt: Martin Luther King, "Mountaintop Speech": “And then I got to Memphis. And some began to say the threats, or talk about the threats that were out. What would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers? Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn't matter with me now. Because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. So I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord."] The next day, Martin Luther King was shot dead. James Earl Ray, a white supremacist, pled guilty to the murder, and the evidence against him seems overwhelming from what I've read, but the King family have always claimed that the murder was part of a larger conspiracy and that Ray was not the gunman. Aretha was obviously distraught, and she attended the funeral, as did almost every other prominent Black public figure. James Baldwin wrote of the funeral: "In the pew directly before me sat Marlon Brando, Sammy Davis, Eartha Kitt—covered in black, looking like a lost, ten-year-old girl—and Sidney Poitier, in the same pew, or nearby. Marlon saw me, and nodded. The atmosphere was black, with a tension indescribable—as though something, perhaps the heavens, perhaps the earth, might crack. Everyone sat very still. The actual service sort of washed over me, in waves. It wasn't that it seemed unreal; it was the most real church service I've ever sat through in my life, or ever hope to sit through; but I have a childhood hangover thing about not weeping in public, and I was concentrating on holding myself together. I did not want to weep for Martin, tears seemed futile. But I may also have been afraid, and I could not have been the only one, that if I began to weep I would not be able to stop. There was more than enough to weep for, if one was to weep—so many of us, cut down, so soon. Medgar, Malcolm, Martin: and their widows, and their children. Reverend Ralph David Abernathy asked a certain sister to sing a song which Martin had loved—“Once more,” said Ralph David, “for Martin and for me,” and he sat down." Many articles and books on Aretha Franklin say that she sang at King's funeral. In fact she didn't, but there's a simple reason for the confusion. King's favourite song was the Thomas Dorsey gospel song "Take My Hand, Precious Lord", and indeed almost his last words were to ask a trumpet player, Ben Branch, if he would play the song at the rally he was going to be speaking at on the day of his death. At his request, Mahalia Jackson, his old friend, sang the song at his private funeral, which was not filmed, unlike the public part of the funeral that Baldwin described. Four months later, though, there was another public memorial for King, and Franklin did sing "Take My Hand, Precious Lord" at that service, in front of King's weeping widow and children, and that performance *was* filmed, and gets conflated in people's memories with Jackson's unfilmed earlier performance: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Take My Hand, Precious Lord (at Martin Luther King Memorial)"] Four years later, she would sing that at Mahalia Jackson's funeral. Through all this, Franklin had been working on her next album, Aretha Now, the sessions for which started more or less as soon as the sessions for Lady Soul had finished. The album was, in fact, bookended by deaths that affected Aretha. Just as King died at the end of the sessions, the beginning came around the time of the death of Otis Redding -- the sessions were cancelled for a day while Wexler travelled to Georgia for Redding's funeral, which Franklin was too devastated to attend, and Wexler would later say that the extra emotion in her performances on the album came from her emotional pain at Redding's death. The lead single on the album, "Think", was written by Franklin and -- according to the credits anyway -- her husband Ted White, and is very much in the same style as "Respect", and became another of her most-loved hits: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Think"] But probably the song on Aretha Now that now resonates the most is one that Jerry Wexler tried to persuade her not to record, and was only released as a B-side. Indeed, "I Say a Little Prayer" was a song that had already once been a hit after being a reject.  Hal David, unlike Burt Bacharach, was a fairly political person and inspired by the protest song movement, and had been starting to incorporate his concerns about the political situation and the Vietnam War into his lyrics -- though as with many such writers, he did it in much less specific ways than a Phil Ochs or a Bob Dylan. This had started with "What the World Needs Now is Love", a song Bacharach and David had written for Jackie DeShannon in 1965: [Excerpt: Jackie DeShannon, "What the "World Needs Now is Love"] But he'd become much more overtly political for "The Windows of the World", a song they wrote for Dionne Warwick. Warwick has often said it's her favourite of her singles, but it wasn't a big hit -- Bacharach blamed himself for that, saying "Dionne recorded it as a single and I really blew it. I wrote a bad arrangement and the tempo was too fast, and I really regret making it the way I did because it's a good song." [Excerpt: Dionne Warwick, "The Windows of the World"] For that album, Bacharach and David had written another track, "I Say a Little Prayer", which was not as explicitly political, but was intended by David to have an implicit anti-war message, much like other songs of the period like "Last Train to Clarksville". David had sons who were the right age to be drafted, and while it's never stated, "I Say a Little Prayer" was written from the perspective of a woman whose partner is away fighting in the war, but is still in her thoughts: [Excerpt: Dionne Warwick, "I Say a Little Prayer"] The recording of Dionne Warwick's version was marked by stress. Bacharach had a particular way of writing music to tell the musicians the kind of feel he wanted for the part -- he'd write nonsense words above the stave, and tell the musicians to play the parts as if they were singing those words. The trumpet player hired for the session, Ernie Royal, got into a row with Bacharach about this unorthodox way of communicating musical feeling, and the track ended up taking ten takes (as opposed to the normal three for a Bacharach session), with Royal being replaced half-way through the session. Bacharach was never happy with the track even after all the work it had taken, and he fought to keep it from being released at all, saying the track was taken at too fast a tempo. It eventually came out as an album track nearly eighteen months after it was recorded -- an eternity in 1960s musical timescales -- and DJs started playing it almost as soon as it came out. Scepter records rushed out a single, over Bacharach's objections, but as he later said "One thing I love about the record business is how wrong I was. Disc jockeys all across the country started playing the track, and the song went to number four on the charts and then became the biggest hit Hal and I had ever written for Dionne." [Excerpt: Dionne Warwick, "I Say a Little Prayer"] Oddly, the B-side for Warwick's single, "Theme From the Valley of the Dolls" did even better, reaching number two. Almost as soon as the song was released as a single, Franklin started playing around with the song backstage, and in April 1968, right around the time of Dr. King's death, she recorded a version. Much as Burt Bacharach had been against releasing Dionne Warwick's version, Jerry Wexler was against Aretha even recording the song, saying later “I advised Aretha not to record it. I opposed it for two reasons. First, to cover a song only twelve weeks after the original reached the top of the charts was not smart business. You revisit such a hit eight months to a year later. That's standard practice. But more than that, Bacharach's melody, though lovely, was peculiarly suited to a lithe instrument like Dionne Warwick's—a light voice without the dark corners or emotional depths that define Aretha. Also, Hal David's lyric was also somewhat girlish and lacked the gravitas that Aretha required. “Aretha usually listened to me in the studio, but not this time. She had written a vocal arrangement for the Sweet Inspirations that was undoubtedly strong. Cissy Houston, Dionne's cousin, told me that Aretha was on the right track—she was seeing this song in a new way and had come up with a new groove. Cissy was on Aretha's side. Tommy Dowd and Arif were on Aretha's side. So I had no choice but to cave." It's quite possible that Wexler's objections made Franklin more, rather than less, determined to record the song. She regarded Warwick as a hated rival, as she did almost every prominent female singer of her generation and younger ones, and would undoubtedly have taken the implication that there was something that Warwick was simply better at than her to heart. [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "I Say a Little Prayer"] Wexler realised as soon as he heard it in the studio that Franklin's version was great, and Bacharach agreed, telling Franklin's biographer David Ritz “As much as I like the original recording by Dionne, there's no doubt that Aretha's is a better record. She imbued the song with heavy soul and took it to a far deeper place. Hers is the definitive version.” -- which is surprising because Franklin's version simplifies some of Bacharach's more unusual chord voicings, something he often found extremely upsetting. Wexler still though thought there was no way the song would be a hit, and it's understandable that he thought that way. Not only had it only just been on the charts a few months earlier, but it was the kind of song that wouldn't normally be a hit at all, and certainly not in the kind of rhythmic soul music for which Franklin was known. Almost everything she ever recorded is in simple time signatures -- 4/4, waltz time, or 6/8 -- but this is a Bacharach song so it's staggeringly metrically irregular. Normally even with semi-complex things I'm usually good at figuring out how to break it down into bars, but here I actually had to purchase a copy of the sheet music in order to be sure I was right about what's going on. I'm going to count beats along with the record here so you can see what I mean. The verse has three bars of 4/4, one bar of 2/4, and three more bars of 4/4, all repeated: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "I Say a Little Prayer" with me counting bars over verse] While the chorus has a bar of 4/4, a bar of 3/4 but with a chord change half way through so it sounds like it's in two if you're paying attention to the harmonic changes, two bars of 4/4, another waltz-time bar sounding like it's in two, two bars of four, another bar of three sounding in two, a bar of four, then three more bars of four but the first of those is *written* as four but played as if it's in six-eight time (but you can keep the four/four pulse going if you're counting): [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "I Say a Little Prayer" with me counting bars over verse] I don't expect you to have necessarily followed that in great detail, but the point should be clear -- this was not some straightforward dance song. Incidentally, that bar played as if it's six/eight was something Aretha introduced to make the song even more irregular than how Bacharach wrote it. And on top of *that* of course the lyrics mixed the secular and the sacred, something that was still taboo in popular music at that time -- this is only a couple of years after Capitol records had been genuinely unsure about putting out the Beach Boys' "God Only Knows", and Franklin's gospel-inflected vocals made the religious connection even more obvious. But Franklin was insistent that the record go out as a single, and eventually it was released as the B-side to the far less impressive "The House That Jack Built". It became a double-sided hit, with the A-side making number two on the R&B chart and number seven on the Hot One Hundred, while "I Say a Little Prayer" made number three on the R&B chart and number ten overall. In the UK, "I Say a Little Prayer" made number four and became her biggest ever solo UK hit. It's now one of her most-remembered songs, while the A-side is largely forgotten: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "I Say a Little Prayer"] For much of the

SynopsisFor decades many of the 20th century's greatest composers routinely visited Venice's famous canals and churches during a biennial music festival that showcased brand-new works by the likes of Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Britten, and others.The French composer Darius Milhaud describes sharing space with several of his composer-colleagues in a cramped Festival “green room.” “It was a normal sight to see Stravinsky's rain-coat and Constant Lambert's tweed overcoat hanging near my two walking sticks,” writes Milhaud. “Meanwhile, the Italian composer Hildebrando Pizetti would be putting up a mirror, opening a silver toilet-case, and arranging flowers, his wife's photograph and a sheaf of telegrams.”On today's date in 1937, Milhaud conducted the first performance of his Suite Provencale at the Venice Festival. This jaunty score proved to be one of his most popular orchestral works. In 1954, it was Leonard Bernstein's turn. On today's date that year, he conducted in Venice the premiere performance of his Serenade for violin and orchestra, with Isaac Stern the featured soloist.Despite its admirable track record for picking winners, the Venice Festival shut down operations in 1973, although its impact lives on in the number of modern masterworks it helped launch in its day.Music Played in Today's ProgramDarius Milhaud (1892 - 1974) Suite provençale, Op. 152b Detroit Symphony; Neeme Järvi, cond. Chandos 7031Leonard Bernstein (1918 - 1990) Serenade (after Plato's "Symposium") Zino Francescatti, violin; NY Philharmonic; Leonard Bernstein, cond. Sony 60559

Good News: Link HERE The Good Word: A lovely quote about autumn! Good To Know: Some great history about Labor Day… Good News: Link HERE Wonderful World: Get an overview of the beautiful city of Oaxaca HERE. Good One: Your weekly hilarious (?) joke! Sounds Good: Learn a bit about the brilliant composer, Darius Milhaud, […]

Kate Molleson explores the spry and subtly surprising music of Germaine Tailleferre Kate Molleson revels in the spry and subtly surprising music of Germaine Tailleferre, with guests Barbara Kelly and Caroline Potter. Germaine Tailleferre first made a splash in the heady atmosphere of 1920s Paris. She was part of a lively, bohemian scene in which poetry and exhibitions went hand in hand with performances of new music. Her career was given a bump start by the eccentric older composer, Eric Satie. He was an influential voice in avant-garde circles, and his support opened a door to wider recognition. Tailleferre became part of a like-minded set of young composers, along with Francis Poulenc, Arthur Honegger, Darius Milhaud, Louis Durey and Georges Auric. Their energy and drive created exciting new outlets for performances of their music. It was a journalist, Henri Collet, who coined their eventual collective name "Les Six". While their artistic paths quickly diversified, the group remained friends for the rest of their lives. Tailleferre was a prolific composer, writing in all the genres from small scale chamber works to large scale works including cantatas, orchestral scores, ballets and operas. After enjoying considerable success, by the 1930s her prominence began to fade. There's some evidence to suggest that her two unhappy marriages, and the deprivations of living in occupied France, followed by a temporary exile in the States during the second world war all had an adverse impact on her career. Despite these setbacks, she continued to compose and would teach music almost to the very end of her life. She died in 1983 at the age of 91. Held back perhaps by her own retiring personality and historical views of a female composer, Tailleferre's music has been overshadowed by some of the other members of "Les Six". This week Kate Molleson brings Germaine Tailleferre's music firmly in to the limelight. She's joined in studio by two other Tailleferre enthusiasts, Barbara Kelly from the University of Leeds, and Caroline Potter, who's currently writing a book about Tailleferre. Music Featured: Deux valses Image for 8 instruments Jeux de plein air Quartet for Strings Romance in A major Le Marchand d'oiseaux Pas trop vite Piano Trio Ballade for piano and orchestra Chansons françaises, No 5 (excerpt) Chansons françaises (Nos 1, 2 & 5) Concerto No 1 for piano and orchestra Violin sonata No 1 (excerpt) Fandango La nouvelle Cythère (excerpts) Harp Concertino Chansons Françaises (Nos 3 & 4) Violin sonata No 1 (1st & 4th mvts) Partita for piano (excerpt) Chansons du folklore Sonata for Harp Concerto two pianos, chorus and orchestra La cantate du narcisse Larghetto Suite burlesque (1, Dolente) Ouverture trans. By John Paynter Il était un Petit Navire (arr for two pianos) Concertino for flute, piano and chamber orchestra (excerpts) Pancarte pour une porte d'entrée (song cycle) Sonate Champêtre for wind and piano Tu mi chamas Presented by Kate Molleson Produced by Johannah Smith for BBC Audio in Wales For full track listings, including artist and recording details, and to listen to the pieces featured in full (for 30 days after broadcast) head to the series page for Germaine Tailleferre (1892-1983) https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001nw40 And you can delve into the A-Z of all the composers we've featured on Composer of the Week here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/3cjHdZlXwL7W41XGB77X3S0/composers-a-to-z

SynopsisOn today's date in 1937, a two-piano suite by the French composer Darius Milhaud had its premiere. It was entitled “Scaramouche,” after a stock character in the Italian commedia dell arte, and the music's upbeat, carefree mood made it an instant hit. For his part, Milhaud was in an apprehensive mood. When he and his wife Madeleine had visited the 1937 Paris International Exposition, they saw premonitions of war reflected in many of its exhibits.“Picasso's ‘Guernica' adorned the walls of the Spanish pavilion,” recalled Milhaud, “but the Spanish Republic had been murdered. Placed face to face, the German and the Soviet pavilions seemed to challenge each other to mortal combat. One evening, as we watched the sun set behind the flags of all nations, Madeleine clutched my arm in anguish and whispered, ‘This is the end of Europe!'”In 1940, Milhaud was forced to leave France when the Germans occupied Paris. As a Jew, his music was promptly banned. But in 1943, two French pianists performed “Scaramouche” in concert, tricking the German censors by listing its composer's name as “Hamid-al-Usurid”—a fictitious Arabic composer whose name just happens to be an anagram of “Darius Milhaud.” Music Played in Today's ProgramDarius Milhaud (1892 - 1974) Scaramouche Anthony and Joseph Paratore, pianos Four Winds 3014

durée : 00:06:09 - Classic & Co - par : Anna Sigalevitch - RDV avec vous Anna Sigalevitch, et sa série "La vie serait moins belle sans"... Le dimanche ce sont des personnalités qui partagent avec nous des morceaux qui leurs sont chers. Aujourd'hui, l'auteur de bande dessinée Jul, et sa vie serait moins belle sans... "Le bœuf sur le toit" de Darius Milhaud.

durée : 00:15:57 - Les Nuits de France Culture - par : Albane Penaranda - La compositrice Germaine Tailleferre se racontait en dix entretiens en 1975. Dans le quatrième volet, elle se souvient de sa rencontre avec Erik Satie, Maurice Ravel et de la constitution du Groupe des Six avec Darius Milhaud, Arthur Honegger, Georges Auric, Louis Durey et Francis Poulenc. - invités : Germaine Tailleferre Compositrice (1892-1983)

durée : 00:59:19 - "Volver" (Carlos Gardel / Alfredo Le Pera) (1934) - par : Laurent Valero - "Émission consacrée au compositeur américain Burt Bacharach. Ce grand musicien disciple de Darius Milhaud, Bohuslav Martinů et Nino Castelnuovo-Tedesco, aura marqué la pop internationale avec un grand nombre de standards de renommée mondiale dans le cinéma et la comédie musicale" Laurent Valero - réalisé par : Adrien Landivier

durée : 00:09:09 - Le Disque classique du jour du mercredi 04 janvier 2023 - Le nombre de mélodies laissées par Darius Milhaud est immense. Ses sources préférées étaient les textes de Claudel, Latil, Cocteau, Verlaine, Supervielle et Mallarmé. Dans ce premier volume, hommage aux œuvres de jeunesse par Holger Falk et Steffen Schleiermacher.

durée : 01:29:42 - En pistes ! du mercredi 04 janvier 2023 - par : Emilie Munera, Rodolphe Bruneau Boulmier - Ce matin, nouveau tour de piste en compagnie du pianiste Holger Falk mais aussi de Maurizio Pollini interprétant Beethoven ou encore le dernier enregistrement de la violoniste espagnole Lina Tur Bonet.

durée : 00:14:56 - Disques de légende du mardi 13 décembre 2022 - Le séjour de Milhaud au Brésil comme secrétaire de Paul Claudel, eut un effet presque initiatique dans le développement de l'homme et du compositeur, qui s'enthousiasme pour les musiques sud-américaines, et dans ce disque légendaire, Darius Milhaud dirige sa propre musique.

Autour de ce thème de la "Création du Monde", Anne PACEO, pour cette première émission, nous enmène dans ce monde avec Darius MILHAUD et pour conclure, ma pièce électroacoustique "HYRANIAGARBHA" (L'Oeuf d'or de l'Inde......la création du monde)

Autour de ce thème de la "Création du Monde", Anne PACEO, pour cette première émission, nous enmène dans ce monde avec Darius MILHAUD et pour conclure, ma pièce électroacoustique "HYRANIAGARBHA" (L'Oeuf d'or de l'Inde......la création du monde)

Synopsis Take one flute, one oboe, and mix well with one each of a clarinet, bassoon and French horn —and you have the recipe for the traditional wind quintet. In the 19th century, this tasty musical mix was perfected by Europeans like the Czech composer Anton Reicha, who produced 24 wind quintets in his lifetime. In the 20th century, American composers like Samuel Barber, Elliott Carter, and John Harbison have all written one wind quintet each—matching Reicha's in quality, if not in quantity. But other American composers HAVE returned to the wind quintet for a second helping. On today's date in 1993, the Wind Quintet No. 2 of the Californian composer David Ward-Steinman received its premiere in Sacramento by the Arioso Quintet. Ward-Steinman titled his second quintet Night Winds, and asked his five players to occasionally double on some non-traditional instruments such as bamboo or clay flutes, a train-whistle, and even the traditional wind instrument of Indigenous Australians, the didgeridoo—all to create some atmospheric “night-wind” sounds. In addition to wind quintets, David Ward-Steinman composed orchestral works, chamber music and pieces for solo piano. A native of Louisiana, Ward-Steinman studied with Darius Milhaud in Aspen, Milton Babbitt at Tanglewood, and Nadia Boulanger in Paris. Music Played in Today's Program Antonin Reicha (1770-1836) Wind Quintet No. 23 in a No. 23, Op. 100 Albert Schweitzer Quintet CPO 999027 David Ward-Steinman (1936-2015) Woodwind Quintet No. 2 (Night Winds) Arioso Quintet Fleur de Son Classics 57935

Ein Lichtlein in der Dunkelheit. Lass Dich von der Musik und der Nacht einhüllen. Diese Musikstücke hast Du in der Folge gehört: Megan Tibbits - "Solid Ground" // Sven Helbig - "Am Abend" // Hälla - "Home in Us" // Darius Milhaud - "Streichquartett Nr. 1 (Intime)" // Chad Lawson - "She Dreams of Time" // Wenn Du eine Idee oder einen Wunsch hast, zu welchem Thema Philipp unbedingt eine Playlist zusammenzimmern muss, dann schreib ihm ebenso eine Mail: playlist@ndr.de.

My 2002 BBC Radio 2 documentary series, “The Arrangers”, featured this documentary and my exclusive interview with Composer/Arranger PETE RUGOLO. He studied with Darius Milhaud, and had a long association with the STAN KENTON orchestra, becoming one of the most influential composers in modern jazz. He went on to produce and arrange for stars such as June Christy, The Four Freshmen and Nat King Cole, and write brilliant scores for film and TV including The Fugitive, The Untouchables, and Richard Diamond. As A&R for Capitol, he signed and produced the Miles Davis project known as “The Birth of the Cool”, enabling music that created the “cool school” of jazz. Here is his fascinating story, in his own words, assisted by contributions from Gene Lees, Stephanie Stein Crease, and Bud Shank. PETE RUGOLO – EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW – Kenton, Cole and MILES! Watch this episode in video HERE #peterugolo #richardniles #radiorichard #richardnilesinterview #milesdavis #thefugitive #theuntouchables Please Like, Share, and Subscribe to our YouTube channel HERE Buy Richard's acclaimed books HERE Buy Richard's astounding music HERE  Check our channel's official online shop for great & exclusive memorabilia HERE Send me enough for a cup of coffee at The Ritz to keep our Radio Richard growing: Via PayPal Via Patreon Radio Richard Theme ©2020 Niles Smiles Music (BMI) By Richard Niles, Performed by Kim Chandler & Richard Niles

Synopsis On today's date in 1892, Darius Milhaud was born in Aix-en-Provence. He was one of the most amiable – and prolific – of 20th century French composers, producing over 400 works, including a dozen symphonies. Milhaud spent many years in America teaching at Mills College in California, whose climate reminded him of his beloved Provence. Despite the rheumatoid arthritis that eventually confined him to a wheelchair, and the fact that he was forced to flee his native country when the Nazis arrived, Milhaud titled his 1973 autobiography: “My Happy Life.” In his autobiography, Milhaud says that after composing his Twelfth Symphony, his publisher, half in jest, asked him to please stop and that surely twelve symphonies were enough. “I did not stop writing symphonies,” Milhaud slyly noted, “but a minor incident prompted me to give them other titles.” That incident occurred after a concert with the Boston Symphony when Milhaud conducted some of his own music. He heard the grandmother of one of his students remark, “All that is very nice, but it is NOT music for Boston!” Amused, Milhaud composed a work he titled: “Music for Boston,” and soon embarked on a whole NEW series of symphonic works, referred to generically as the “Music For” series, which include “Music for” Indiana, New Orleans, Lisbon, and Prague. Music Played in Today's Program Darius Milhaud (1892-1974) –Symphony No. 9, Op. 380 (Basel Radio Symphony; Alun Francis, cond.) CPO 199 166

Synopsis Franz Liszt, the inventor of the "symphonic poem," wrote 13 of them. The second, "Tasso," had its first performance on today's date in 1849. The occasion was a festival celebrating the 100th birthday of the great German national poet and playwright Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the author of "Faust." The festival was in Weimar, Germany, the city where Goethe died and was buried in 1832. Liszt's "Tasso" was written to serve as the overture to Goethe's drama about the Italian poet "Torquato Tasso," and its premiere performance was conducted by its composer. The main theme of the work is said to be a tune Liszt claimed he heard sung by an Italian gondolier in Venice. One of the more surprising tributes to Goethe occurred not in Germany, but in scenic Aspen, Colorado, when the Aspen Music Festival was founded in Goethe's honor in 1949 – on the 200th anniversary of his birth. The Aspen Music Festival has grown over the years and today draws some 30,000 visitors annually. One of the original founders of the Festival was French composer Darius Milhaud, who taught at the Aspen Music School for many years. This music is from Milhaud's "Aspen Serenade," written in 1957. More recently, during conductor David Zinman years as the Festival's Music Director, many contemporary American composers, including John Corigliano, Richard Danielpour, Christopher Rouse, and Augusta Read Thomas, have had their works performed – and occasionally premiered – in Aspen. Music Played in Today's Program Franz Liszt (1811-1886) –Tasso (Orchestre de Paris; Sir Georg Solti, cond.) London 417 513 Darius Milhaud (1892-1974) –Aspen Serenade, Op 361 (Stuttgart Radio Symphony; Gilbert Varga, cond.) CPO 999114

好久不见，我是dy。 这期电台呢，其实酝酿已久。应该还是在7月初的时候，看理想新媒体的小伙伴邀请主讲人们给今年的毕业生送一些寄语。杨照老师很快就答应了，还提出，想录制一期毕业生寄语番外的番外，而这个番外，他说，不是针对毕业生，而是有人问：什么是好的生活？ 另一个背景则是，前段时间，杨照老师接受了一条的采访，最后这期采访的推送标题是，"如果不内卷，2亿中国年轻人会爆发新的高度"，听着就很鸡汤或者成功学对吧。但其实完整看文字的内容，会明白老师想表达的意思并非标题那么简单粗暴，又或是罔顾现实。 一条的采访推送后，收到了很多反馈，其中一些评论，让老师觉得有些伤心，类似于说，"除非你家境小资，父母工作稳定，收入可观，接受不婚不育的可能性，不那么在乎物质生活，还能把钱看的很轻。不然没有人会愿意去做一份他并不太喜欢还每天累死累活的工作，追逐梦想和把爱好做成职业的只能是少数人。我或许有年迈的父母需要赡养，又或许有年幼的孩子需要哺育。80.90后的大多数普通人没有办法依靠父母给你衣食无忧的生活，他们不是不想，而是不能。他们只能靠自己去创造这个条件，为了让下一代成为文中的"志业"者。" 虽然我不完全同意这条评论中的看法，但确实从很多次对"志业"或者"理想"的讨论中，总无法对"现实"视而不见。不管是现实的经济下行、就业机会减少；还是有创造性的工作因某些难以抗衡的力量被约束、限制，都让人"提不起劲"；然而在这样的环境下，不努力又似乎更难生存。这也许，也是"精神内耗"会吸引那么多人关注的原因吧，我们，似乎都想要找到一点治愈。 于是我带着很多人的，以及我自己的问题，决定以对话的形式和老师来做这一期番外的番外，问问他，如何看待这一代年轻人面临的大环境，又为什么说，我们处在一个过度压抑，又被过度动员的社会。 收听指南 06:20 这一代年轻人面临的环境比上一代真的更难了吗？ 19:57 今天的年轻人之所以总以"接受现实"为前提，是规训社会的必然结果吗？ 38:18 杨照老师30岁是什么状态？曾经被什么打败过吗？ 46:13 怎么理解"过度动员，又被过度压抑的社会"？ 1:00:00 历史上，或其他国家/地区有经历今天中国社会类似的情况吗？ 1:09:53 不"卷"、不回老板信息就可能落后、或被淘汰，该怎么办？ 1:18:38 杨照老师会浪费时间吗？都做些什么？ 1:24:20 现实逼仄，有的工作就是很工具人、很螺丝钉，有谈理想的空间吗？ 提及书目/人物 节目里提及的《第三波》的中国内地版本   节目中提及的《10倍速》的中国内地版本   达律斯·米约（Darius Milhaud，1892－1974），犹太血统的法国作曲家   本期推荐 《你好，马克思先生：资本论及其创造的世界》 《认识现代社会的真相：韦伯60讲》 《温情与敬意：钱穆学思总览80讲》 《中国原典通读计划》 专访杨照：我还来得及成为一个博学的人吗 专访王芳："空心病"流行的时代，在生活的缝隙找寻意义感 本期参与 嘉宾 | 杨照 主播 | dy 文字 | dy 制作 | dy 商务合作 bd@vistopia.com.cn 互动微博 @看理想电台要放飞自我

El grupo de Los Seis, nombre dado en 1920 por el crítico Henri Collet, como analogía a los Cinco de Rusia. Este grupo de compositores estuvo conformado por Georges Auric, Louis Durey, Arthur Honegger, Darius Milhaud, Francis Poulenc y Germaine Tailleferre. Los miembros del grupo se adhirieron a la vertiente antirromántica impulsada por Jean Cocteau, pero poco después emprendieron caminos distintos. Louis Durey, el militante político del grupo, quien falleció un 3 de julio de 1979, adoptó una postura de silencio casi completo en composición durante la ocupación para demostrar su rechazo a cooperar con el control nazi de Francia en la Segunda Guerra Mundial. Durey se negó a componer obras nuevas mientras los alemanes estuvieron en el poder, pero se volcó a coleccionar y a arreglar canciones. Durey también se unió a la organización de la resistencia francesa Front National des Musiciens y se convirtió en un miembro destacado. Allí trabajó para esconder judíos y para preservar la música francesa prohibida. Hoy escucharemos de este compositor, el primer movimiento de su Trio para Oboe Clarinete y Fagot interpretado por el Arundo-Donax Ensemble.

durée : 00:24:59 - Les Nuits de France Culture - 1ère étape : Franchir "La Porte de France". Classique de la culture populaire, "Le Tour de la France par deux enfants" de G. Bruno (1877) est raconté par Michel Bouquet dans une adaptation radiophonique de 1976. Deux frères, fuyant l'annexion de la Lorraine, voyagent à pied en France. Deux orphelins de père, André et  Julien Volden, sept et quatorze ans, parcourent l'Hexagone dans le sens des aiguilles d'une montre. Leur périple est une véritable leçon de géographie et d'histoire de France. L'auteur du livre, Augustine Fouillée cachée sous le pseudonyme de G. Bruno, peint un pays avant tout rural et artisanal. Elle compose une ode à une France éternelle, en évitant les sujets qui fâchent : la Révolution, la Commune ou la condition ouvrière. Elle dessine une France modelée par le travail des hommes, garant de la cohésion sociale. Cet ouvrage mythique, qui a marqué l'enfance et l'imaginaire de plusieurs générations, a longtemps eu sa place dans les sacoches, cartables, gibecières, buffets, pupitres, et tables de nuit. Véritable roman scolaire, ce manuel de lecture était bien souvent le seul livre de la maison entre la Bible et le Petit Larousse Illustré. Il est distribué à sept millions 400 000 exemplaires de 1877 à 1914. Rien ne soutient mieux notre courage que la pensée d'un devoir à remplir Les enfants viennent de perdre leur père et se dirigent chez Etienne, le sabotier. Le premier des 24 épisodes s'intitule Le Départ d'André et de Julien. Illustration musicale : Marche Funèbre de Darius Milhaud interprété par l'Orchestre Philharmonique de Paris sous la direction du compositeur. De G. Bruno (Augustine Fouillée) Adaptation Sylvie Albert -Interprétation Michel Bouquet et Nathalie Nerval Réalisation : Guy Delaunay Le Tour de la France par deux enfants 1/24 : Le départ d'André et de Julien (1ère diffusion : 02/08/1976) Edition Web : Anne de Biran Archive Ina-Radio France

durée : 00:25:13 - Musicopolis - par : Anne-Charlotte Rémond - Dans cet épisode de Musicopolis, Anne-Charlotte Rémond revient sur l'histoire de la création du "Boeuf sur le toit" du compositeur Darius Milhaud (1892-1974). - réalisé par : Philippe Petit

Dave Brubeck, designated a “Living Legend” by the Library of Congress, was one of the most active and popular musicians in both the jazz and classical worlds. With a career that spanned over six decades, his experiments in odd time signatures, improvised counterpoint, polyrhythm and polytonality remain hallmarks of innovation. When I heard Brubeck would be in London for a series of concerts, I immediately booked an interview for the BBC as part of my series, “The New Jazz Standards”. He talks about his early, experimental Octet, studies with Darius Milhaud, his musical influences, how “cool” jazz isn't cool at all, and how his admirers included Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Duke Ellington and Stan Kenton. He also tells some very amusing stories about his dear friend and brilliant musical partner, Paul Desmond. This was so much fun, and I'm so happy to bring you this rare interview with a very nice musical giant who always did everything in his own sweet way -Dave Brubeck Time Out with DAVE BRUBECK – Rare 2003 INTERVIEW with Take Five Legend Watch this episode in video HERE #DaveBrubeck #RichardNiles #DAVEBRUBECKRare2003INTERVIEW #RadioRichard #DaveBrubeck #DaveBrubeckQuartet #PaulDesmond #EugeneWright #JoeMorello #TakeFive #DaveBrubeckOctet #DariusMihaud #DukeEllington #StanKenton #JohnColtrane #LouisArmstrong #MilesDavis #Jazz #CoolJazz #JazzComposition #ClassicalMusic #London Please Like, Share, and Subscribe to our YouTube channel HERE Buy Richard's acclaimed books HERE Buy Richard's astounding music HERE  Check our channel's official online shop for great & exclusive memorabilia HERE Send me enough for a cup of coffee at The Ritz to keep our Radio Richard growing: Via PayPal Via Patreon “Radio Richard Theme” ©2022Niles Smiles Music (BMI) by Richard Niles “New Jazz Standards” ©2022Niles Smiles Music (BMI) by Richard Niles FAIR USE DECLARATION “Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for “fair use” for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational, or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use.” This YouTube channel and its videos may contain copyrighted recordings, the use of which may not always be specifically authorized by the copyright owner. In such a case, Dr. Richard Niles, an established educator, is making the material available in our efforts to educate and advance understanding of music through research and criticism. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. All content and shows that are on this page that are copyrighted are used under the fair use rationale.  

JOSÉ MARÍA PRESENTA: JUNIO DE BALLETS     Leo Délibes: “Coppélia” (Mazurka)    Claude Debussy: “La boîte à joujoux” (“La caja de juguetes”)   ·        El sueño de la caja   ·        La tienda de juguetes    Josef Bayer: “La muñeca hada”   ·        Preludio   ·        Marcha triunfal   ·        Galop   ·        El regreso a las cajas    Gioachino Rossini - Ottorino Respighi: “La boutique fantasque” (“La juguetería fantástica”)   ·        Tarantella   ·        Mazurka    Erik Satie: “Jack in the box” (Orq. Darius Milhaud).

Synopsis In 1944, the French composer Darius Milhaud was in California, teaching at Mills College in California, and received a commission to write a piece suitable for school bands. With a world at war, the Jewish composer had found safe refuge in the U.S., and so eagerly accepted the commission for a number of reasons. Milhaud, confined to a wheelchair for most of his adult life, sent his wife Madaleine to the College library to obtain a collection of French folk tunes. His idea was arrange of some these into a suite. As the composer himself explained after his “Suite Française” was finished: “The five parts of [my] Suite are named after French Provinces, the very ones in which the American and Allied armies fought together with the French underground for the liberation of my country. I used some folk tunes of these Provinces, as I wanted the young American to hear the popular melodies of those parts of France where their fathers and brothers fought on behalf of the peaceful and democratic people of France." Milhaud's “Suite Française” was premiered by the Goldman Band in New York City on today's date in 1945, and rapidly became one of the best-known and most often performed of Milhaud's works, and one of the established classics of the wind-band repertory. Music Played in Today's Program Darius Milhaud (1892 - 1974) Suite Francaise (Eastman Wind Ensemble; Frederick Fennell, cond.) Mercury 289 434 399-2

Synopsis Temple Emanu-El in San Francisco is one of America's foremost reform congregations. For some 50 years its cantor was Reuben Rinder, who, in addition to his liturgical duties, was a composer, impresario, and musical mentor. Cantor Rinder influenced the careers of two of the 20th century's greatest violinists, Yehudi Menuhin and Isaac Stern, and also commissioned two of the 20th century's most famous concert versions of the Jewish liturgy, the Evening and Morning Sabbath Service settings of Ernst Bloch and Darius Milhaud. Milhaud's Sabbath Morning Service was first heard at Temple Emanu-El on today's date in 1949, with its composer conducting. Milhaud was born in Provence and wrote that the Provencal Jewish tradition evoked in his score differs somewhat from the more standard Ashkenazi liturgy prevalent in most American synagogues then and now. The composer's intention was to create a personal musical statement that could serve as both an actual liturgy for the faithful and as an ecumenical musical experience for any and all who hear the work, whether in temple or concert hall. In that respect, Milhaud's Sacred Service was a great success. Alongside Bloch's setting, written in the early 1930s, shortly before the onset of the Holocaust, Milhaud's setting, written in the years following the conclusion of World War II, remains a powerful and moving affirmation of religious faith. Music Played in Today's Program Darius Milhaud (1892 - 1974) — Sabbath Morning Service (Prague Philharmonic Choir; Czech Philharmonic; Gerard Schwarz, cond.) Naxos 8.559409

Subscribe to Quotomania on Simplecast or search for Quotomania on your favorite podcast app!Through his operas, his symphonies, his compositions for his own ensemble, and his wide-ranging collaborations with artists ranging from Twyla Tharp to Allen Ginsberg, Leonard Cohen to David Bowie, Philip Glass has had an extraordinary and unprecedented impact upon the musical and intellectual life of his times.The operas – “Einstein on the Beach,” “Satyagraha,” “Akhnaten,” and “The Voyage,” among many others – play throughout the world's leading houses, and rarely to an empty seat. Glass has written music for experimental theater and for Academy Award-winning motion pictures such as “The Hours” and Martin Scorsese's “Kundun,” while “Koyaanisqatsi,” his initial filmic landscape with Godfrey Reggio and the Philip Glass Ensemble, may be the most radical and influential mating of sound and vision since “Fantasia.” His associations, personal and professional, with leading rock, pop and world music artists date back to the 1960s, including the beginning of his collaborative relationship with artist Robert Wilson. Indeed, Glass is the first composer to win a wide, multi-generational audience in the opera house, the concert hall, the dance world, in film and in popular music – simultaneously.He was born in 1937 and grew up in Baltimore. He studied at the University of Chicago, the Juilliard School and in Aspen with Darius Milhaud. Finding himself dissatisfied with much of what then passed for modern music, he moved to Europe, where he studied with the legendary pedagogue Nadia Boulanger (who also taught Aaron Copland , Virgil Thomson and Quincy Jones) and worked closely with the sitar virtuoso and composer Ravi Shankar. He returned to New York in 1967 and formed the Philip Glass Ensemble – seven musicians playing keyboards and a variety of woodwinds, amplified and fed through a mixer.The new musical style that Glass was evolving was eventually dubbed “minimalism.” Glass himself never liked the term and preferred to speak of himself as a composer of “music with repetitive structures.” Much of his early work was based on the extended reiteration of brief, elegant melodic fragments that wove in and out of an aural tapestry. Or, to put it another way, it immersed a listener in a sort of sonic weather that twists, turns, surrounds, develops.There has been nothing “minimalist” about his output. In the past 25 years, Glass has composed more than twenty five operas, large and small; twelve symphonies, thirteen concertos; soundtracks to films ranging from new scores for the stylized classics of Jean Cocteau to Errol Morris's documentary about former defense secretary Robert McNamara; nine string quartets; a growing body of work for solo piano and organ. He has collaborated with Paul Simon, Linda Ronstadt, Yo-Yo Ma, and Doris Lessing, among many others. He presents lectures, workshops, and solo keyboard performances around the world, and continues to appear regularly with the Philip Glass Ensemble.From https://philipglass.com/biography/. For more information about Philip Glass:Words Without Music: https://wwnorton.com/books/Words-Without-Music/“The beginner's guide to Philip Glass”: https://www.eno.org/discover-opera/the-beginners-guide-to-philip-glass/“How Philip Glass Went From Driving Taxis to Composing”: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2018/04/philip-glass-taxi-driver-composer/558278/“Philip Glass”: https://www.interviewmagazine.com/music/philip-glass