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

[Jeff Sultanof]

Dr. Biel,

It was your post that I remembered with regard to Williams and Artis
Wodehouse. In a way, I feel a bit guilty having you restate what you
originally wrote so well some years ago. Dan Morgenstern also spoke about
this at some roundtable discussion at Rutgers some years ago. The subject
was the ethics of reissues.

I worked with Artis Wodehouse on a couple of book projects when I was still
working for Warner Bros., and reading your post brought back some memories.
I well remember the times she would play her transcriptions of Gershwin for
me at my office, and how she nailed his style and sound.

The one time I met him, Martin came off as more than a little full of
himself.

Jeff Sultanof

On Sun, May 29, 2011 at 5:47 PM, Michael Biel <mbiel at mbiel.com> wrote:

> 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
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