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

[David Lennick]

Google "Bob Farnon" and you'll find a lot of early pix and links. There are 
commercial 78s and airchecks of The Happy Gang during Farnon's period but he 
was pretty much playing muted trumpet. The Overseas AEF Band performances (on a 
couple of CDs) might yield up interesting stuff. During an interview, I showed 
him one of the Happy Gang's early Bluebird 78s and he said "I hope you won't 
hurt your equipment."

dl

On 5/7/2011 6:29 AM, Jeff Sultanof wrote:
> 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