[78-L] Martin William -- Culprit was: Kaufman's Pagan Love Song on LP

[Michael Biel]

From: Jeff Sultanof <jeffsultanof at gmail.com>
> This is a vague memory, but I specifically remember a Smithsonian Records
> reissue set where all sorts of editing took place. Martin Williams was the
> culprit, and this created a real uproar at the time. Dan Morgenstern once
> discussed it at a lecture. Does anyone remember this at all? Jeff Sultanof

I've told this story here before and I am proud to repeat it.  I got to 
TWICE publicly spit in Martin's eye over this.

In 1982 at ARSC he did a presentation about his Smithsonian Broadway 
show re-creation albums, and he explained his edition of some tracks had 
eliminating perhaps a vocal refrain by someone who had not been in the 
show but the band on the record had been in the show.  This is what had 
created the initial outroar.  I had more important fish to fry, 
specifically the "creative editing" he had done on the two mistrackings 
of Gershwin playing "Someone To Watch Over Me" from his Feenamint 
broadcast. There were a few notes missing at a side change and a groove 
skip-ahead a few seconds into the next side.  He had Jack Tower "fix" it 
by repeating a section of Gershwin playing the same portion, and the fix 
starts with a repeat of a measure played twice together, something that 
sticks out if it had been a device that Gershwin had actually used.  In 
his talk, Martin had bragged that musicologists could used these 
recordings to restore the then-missing orchestrations of these shows. 
(This became moot a few years later when the missing scores were found 
in a warehouse.)  In the Q&A I told Martin that just like his contention 
that the overture scorings could be reconstructed, perhaps someone might 
study Gershwin's piano style from this edited and modified recording.  
"I noted it in the liner notes" he said.  "No you didn't.  All you said 
was a credit to Jack for his creative editing, not what he actually did."

The following year at ARSC we had a presentation by a very young Artis 
Woodehouse examining Gershwin's piano style.  We had rented a grand 
piano for her, and she had overhead transparencies showing the music she 
was playing.  She said at the start that she was examining three songs, 
but waited till each section to identify them. For a half hour I sat 
there next to Fred Williams hoping that she was not going to analyze 
"Someone."  Fred remembered the problem and we both were dismayed when 
she announced that this was her third piece, and among the different 
versions she studied and played was the very section with the edits.  
There on the screen was her transcription from the recording, and she 
played the repeated measures, noting them.  Martin Williams was sitting 
in the back and was slumping lower and lower in his seat.  When the Q&A 
began Martin darted to a microphone so I decided to let him speak 
first.  He asked her if she had used the Smithsonian version.  He damn 
well knew she had.  "Did you know it was edited?"  "No!"  "Well, it was 
mentioned in the liner notes."  I didn't have the liner notes, I 
borrowed the record without the cover." He then sat down with no further 
explanation, leaving her shocked.

I got up to the mic and turned to Martin and blasted him saying I warned 
you last year this would happen.  I then as gently as I could explained 
to Artis that the section that began with daa de daa da da - daa de daa 
da da was not how Gershwin had played it.  I then again blasted Martin 
for illegally pirating the Mark 56 legal and family authorized issue 
(Gerorge Garabedian had told me that Martin had not gotten permission to 
use it) and told him the original discs are at the Library of Congress 
and he could have gone down the Mall to get a retransfer of both sets of 
disc dubs and probably find that the other set has the missing notes.  
(This turns out to be true because the only other family aughorized 
issue, the CDs on MusicMasters and Music Heritage Society, used 
re-transfers that did have the recording without the skips.  Ironically 
this issue was prepared by Jack Towers who had not remembered his 
earlier "creative editing" toll I spoke to him about it!)

After that other set had come out, Artis did a Keyboard magazine article 
about the piece, and was relieved when I told her that she had used the 
correct recording this time.

In the following years I had another couple of uncomfortable run-ins 
with Martin, one where I had to break up a fist fight at the Bowling 
Green ARSC, and another where he GLARED at me "You don't think Sarah 
Vaughn is a SERIOUS performer?"  I was not alone.  At the Rochester ARSC 
noted jazz writer Phil Elwood did the eulogy for Martin.  He started "My 
mother always told me never to speak ill of the dead, but in Martin's 
case I will make an exception."  I really need to go back to my 
videotape of this, but I remember it as being hilarious.  (The earlier 
talks on Gershwin exist only on audio.)

A brief explanation of the Feenamint recordings.  They were origianlly 
on floppy celluloid discs, and stored in Ira Gershwin's attic.  They had 
started to deteriorate and Ira had them dubbed to AudioDisc lacquers in 
1948.  Because the originals occasional skipped, there were two sets of 
dubs made of two separate passes.  You can still hear the skips at the 
beginning of the first program because there was water damage to side 
one of one of the dubs with flaking that makes it unplayable.  In the 
case of "Someone", Garabedian made a bad side join losing a couple of 
notes at the end of side two, and then the better-looking copy of side 
three had a skip ahead about 7 seconds into it.  It was later found that 
all the missing notes could be found on the other set of dubs, and you 
hear a little increase of surface noise in the sections using the other 
dub.

Lastly, the first contact I ever had with David Lennick was when I 
complained in a review that he had used the Smithsonian edit in a 
Gershwin CD.  "No," he replied to me, "I did MY OWN creative editing!"  
But still, the only correct version is the MusicMasters / Music Heritage 
Society CDs or anything pirated off of them.

Mike Biel  mbiel at mbiel.com