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

[David Lennick]

I have three short 1942 programs where Farnon leads the ensemble, speaks a bit, 
plays piano on one selection and probably plays trumpet, along with Al and Bob 
Harvey and Bert Pearl..sort of a poor man's Happy Gang. As for anything from 
the CBC with Percy Faith, Alan Bunting would know if any of it exists, which I 
doubt. The Corp almost never airchecked variety and pop music programs in the 
30s and melted down a lot of aluminum discs during the war.

dl

On 5/7/2011 2:09 PM, Jeff Sultanof wrote:
> I have CDs of the Canadian band as broadcast on the BBC; by then his trumpet
> playing days were over. Farnon told me those broadcasts should have stayed
> buried, and I think I know why. He used to monitor the short wave broadcasts
> to take down the new songs to arrange for the band, and in some cases, he
> wasn't 100% accurate. At least one that I heard had the wrong melody and
> lyrics at one point. Still, I can't think of another arranger who would have
> gone to those lengths to play the new songs from the U.S.
>
> Jeff Sultanof
>
> On Sat, May 7, 2011 at 11:05 AM, David Lennick<dlennick at sympatico.ca>wrote:
>
>> 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
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