Posted 6:00 PM by Gene

One reason I hate NEWS HACKS is that they can take a perfectly fine word and turn it into a foul euphemism (witness "tolerance", or "healing"). Recently we've had to see a revival of a word the cri-TIC-al brethren ruined: "SWEET." A few years back the cri-TICS justified grossout comedies by saying, for all their offensive non-humor, they were fundamentally SWEET. They raved several of these excretions because they were SWEET. In time the popcorn palaces were so overwhelmed with SWEETNESS the hypocritical typists screamed NO MAS!!!!!!!!!! Here is why when the subject is the news hacks' veracity Mary McCarthy's words when applied to them will ring forever.

But then such "thinking" would not exist without knee-jerk lockstep straitjacketed ideology. Which brings us to a related topic: jazz. Anyone who's had to endure an academic seminar on the topic will know the prevailing wisdom is that black jazz is better than white because -- the heavy-duty head scratchers will deny it, but it comes down to this racism: they got RHYTHM. We mention this having undergone a sudden infatuation with one of the great songs of all time, "I'm Beginning to See the Light." The Duke wrote that tune, and a grand tune it was; but one of the credited co-authors was Harry James. Both led superlative big bands and both recorded competing versions. Here's the Duke's, and here's Harry James's. I want all but the most hard-core over-Ph'D'd academics to tell me the Duke's version is better. If the identities could be reversed it would still be obvious. Of course James had a huge string section, often superfluous; but he also had "Pretty" Kitty Kallen (!!!!!), and an arranger (uncredited!) with the same penchant for high drama as Glenn Miller's -- James succeeded Miller on the Chesterfield show -- or certainly Les Brown's, whose band put some unmitigated sex behind Doris Day. The Duke's recording, with Joya Sherrill, has too many of his cute tricks, and the arrangement generally just sits there. It is also a bit flat, a common failing of the black jazz bands (bad technical training, no doubt) that didn't prevent them from dominating the music. The academics will unload an arsenal of adjectives on the James band like "commercial" and "schmaltzy" that does not prevent this from being one of the all-time ear-opening recordings. The public made the ultimate decision; while the Duke's disc charted at #6, the James version made #1. That James and Kitty Kallen followed it up with an even bigger hit, the epochal Jule Styne-Sammy Cahn collaboration "It's Been a Long, Long Time", renders this no contest. After the big bands went kerflooey the Duke "raided" the James band, rendering the whole subject moot.

But for the last word, we will defer as we should to the Duke. He once uttered this profound wisdom: "There are two kinds of music: good music, and the other kind." The Duke made great music. Harry James made great music. NUF SAID.

P. S. on 4/9/2011 at 6:58 p. m. We've just listened to the song as performed in the Branson East dead-man's revue Sophisticated Ladies, a mischievous download as it's $500 on Amazon.com. This is precisely why people who might come to love jazz turn away: It's Vegas prefab and showoffy swingin', sung by people who know or care nothing of the tune. In other words it's Sarah Vaughan after even the jazz buffs couldn't stand her. Jazz died a long time ago when it became just another form of cultural onanism. It could come back if someone knew how to do it right.