Posted 4:22 PM by Gene

Humphrey Burton tells us that not long after Leonard Bernstein made his epochal debut as a substitute conductor back in 1943, he and his sister attended a party thrown by the columnist Leonard Lyons, in which they "encountered, among others, Ethel Barrymore, Bernard Baruch, Charles Boyer, Joe DiMaggio, Moss Hart, Garson Kanin, Frank Loesser, Ezio Pinza and John Steinbeck." Assuming a Leonard Bernstein could do the same thing today (highly unlikely), who would he encounter? Well, since we're in an age of musical GENIUS (a big reason such a landmark debut is highly unlikely), he might encounter, if we go by the latest Billboard Top 100, Shakira, Chamillionaire, Nelly Furtado, Young Joc and Daniel Powter! (What a great name for a droner.) We see a novelist in the mix -- how about that pretentious old logroller and would-be Nobel winner John Updike? Or the even older bloviator Norm Mailer? Or maybe someone on the Publishers Weekly list, like -- Dean Koontz! And since we have a ballplayer in there, why not -- Barry Bonds*! Actors? Well certainly BRANGELINA would fit the bill -- and if they're unavailable there's always Jessica Simpson, or THE SON OF GOD. Frank Loesser? How about the anonymous songwriters of that Branson East success d'estime about a chaperone? Opera stars -- can you think of one who isn't dead or retired? Or playwrights? And President Gore or Dr. Wimp can sub for Barney Baruch. All-around GENIUS.

Recently Terry Teachout, who's writing a biography of Satchmo, was in his archive at CUNY's Queens College:

I spent the whole day going through three of Louis Armstrong’s scrapbooks. He started keeping them in the late Twenties, right around the time that his career was taking off. They’re a mixture of snapshots and newspaper and magazine clippings, and anyone with the slightest interest in his life and work would find them fascinating. I effortlessly uncovered one nugget after another, including his first appearances in Walter Winchell’s column and The New Yorker....Though constant use has drained the word awesome of much of its meaning, I don’t know any other way to describe what it feels like to turn the crumbling pages of the personal scrapbooks of the greatest of all jazz musicians.

It's a sad commentary on the BRILLIANCE of our time that a biographer who only knows Satch through his recordings can be excited going through his papers, especially when there is not one person in the music who can even elicit a yawn -- the last funeral ode for jazz. And then we note Walter Winchell's name. Winchell knew everyone worth knowing -- in those days quite a few. We can imagine what prompted Winchell to tout Satch in his column; we can imagine what prompted Satch to save copies in his files. Today we have THE SPYWARE COWBOY, whose only use is spreading pop-up ads, selling rotten movies, and telling fibs. Just the difference between Winchell and his tenth-rate imitator should tell us what kind of cultural rattletrap we schlep in. These days Winchell would give up his column after a week, or become a blogger.

We're don't mean to praise Winchell; it goes without saying he was not a nice man. But why must it go without saying that we're in an age of cultural dross?