[78-L] Your Mother's Son-In-Law - BG and Billie Holiday on Columbia Blue Shellac

[Jeff Sultanof]

David,

Is there any way you could scan them? I'd love to see them. Are you aware of
any airchecks from that program. I've never heard Farnon play trumpet, and
according to Dizzy Gillespie, Farnon was better than he was. And he wasn't
kidding. And since I'm asking, is there anything still existing from the
Percy Faith era with Farnon in the trumpet section of the orchestra?

Farnon did the Zadora albums for two basic reasons: as a favor to the
producer Tino Barzie (a long-time friend of Farnon's manager who managed The
Dorsey Bros in the fifties) and the money was too good to turn down. Farnon
was very gracious about her talent and left a lot unsaid; he was that way.
He was like Duke, although I got to know him very well and he could be very
blunt at times. I frankly would have loved to have heard her in Vegas, with
Vincent Falcone playing piano and conducting. I heard she was surprisingly
good; by that time she was thoroughly rehearsed and knew the material well.

I don't know if you know this, but there was to be a third Zadora album, but
since there had been a major flight disaster involving terrorists (I don't
remember the exact circumstances now), Pia's husband didn't want her flying
overseas, so he told Farnon that he could use the orchestra and the studio
time to record anything he wanted. The results are wonderful; they were
issued on a CD called Farnon at the Movies.

Jeff Sultanof

On Fri, May 6, 2011 at 10:55 PM, David Lennick <dlennick at sympatico.ca>wrote:

> I wonder what Farnon had to say about having to accompany Pia Zadora?
> (Farnon's
> been in my sight lines recently..I found a batch of photographs in a CBC
> waste
> basket last month, obviously things nobody there was old enough to
> recognize,
> but they were of the original members of radio's Happy Gang.)
>
> dl
>
> On 5/6/2011 10:50 PM, Jeff Sultanof wrote:
> > He was hardly a racist, but he turned out to be opinionated. He just
> didn't
> > like Billie Holiday's singing apparently. Or maybe he just didn't like
> her
> > as a person. As I said, he didn't like being interviewed, and you didn't
> put
> > words in his mouth.
> >
> > Both Ellington and Bob Farnon are two examples of people who would never
> say
> > a bad word about anybody in public, but privately..... that was another
> > story. There is an incredible interview with Ellington ca. 1964 with an
> > interviewer from Columbia University, and Duke was shockingly open about
> > many things. The Institute of Jazz Studies has it, and I've heard parts
> of
> > it.
> >
> > Jeff Sultanof
> >
> > On Fri, May 6, 2011 at 10:38 PM, Mark Bardenwerper<citrogsa at charter.net
> >wrote:
> >
> >> On 5/6/2011 9:09, Jeff Sultanof wrote:
> >>> Mark,
> >>>
> >>> These interviews we are discussing took place several years after the
> >> fact.
> >>> The interview that I am referring to took place in the seventies.
> >> Obviously,
> >>> Wilson could compliment whom he felt like by then. He just didn't think
> >> that
> >>> Billie Holiday was such a big deal. He preferred other singers to her.
> It
> >>> was just funny how the interviewer tried to get him to say something
> >>> complimentary about her and he just wasn't buying into it.
> >> I agree. But my point is, was his attitude racist, or based upon other
> >> reasons?
> >>
> >> --
> >> Mark L. Bardenwerper, Sr. #:?)
> >> Technology, thoughtfully, responsibly.
> >> Visit me at http://www.candokaraoke.com
> >>
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