[78-L] EFHJREM

[Jeff Sultanof]

George Simon went on record to protest the strings in James' band, but as I
said in my earlier post, some of the James sides are very beautiful. And
Harry let his arrangers write whatever they wanted; he needed as many
arrangements as he could get given his radio work and his live gigs, but
above all, he loved good music of all types. Johnny Thompson wrote a couple
of very interesting compositions for the band, and James had a version of
Poinciana that was positively bizarre. James even had an arrangement of
Debussy's Golliwog's Cakewalk because he liked the piece. I will always
respect him because he used his huge popularity to expose his audience to
all types of quality music, as well as the treacly stuff that sold lots of
records.

Jeff Sultanof

>
>
> Indeed, when the College Conservatory of Music in Cincinnati ejected their
> 78 rpm collection in 1988 there was another large instance of EFHJREM. And
> it's a pity they are so prevalent, as they are really very good records, but
> they survive in such high numbers that makes them undesirable. I also tend
> towards his later LP albums from "The New James" on -- no one suspected he
> would become such an outstanding bop player; moreover he retained the same
> measure of expressiveness and bravura that makes his early work so
> exceptional. I can do without the string section he had in the early 40s;
> indeed, so could have James as he once noted, but it was there for
> commercial purposes.
>
>
> Uncle Dave Lewis uncledavelewis at hotmail.com
>
>
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> Hotmail® has ever-growing storage! Don’t worry about storage limits.
>
> http://windowslive.com/Tutorial/Hotmail/Storage?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_HM_Tutorial_Storage_062009
> _______________________________________________
> 78-L mailing list
> 78-L at klickitat.78online.com
> http://klickitat.78online.com/mailman/listinfo/78-l
>