After months, nay years, of hoping and hunting, I finally found something I always hoped must exist: film of Distant Cousin Eddy Duchin at the piano with his band, dating from 1936. OK, we could have done without the roller-skaters, but long-lost coz seems adorable: full of charm, fun and musicality.
6 comments:
I enjoyed this very much; sorry to say I'd not heard of Eddy before. YouTube also has his Central Park Casino Orchestra playing "Night and Day". There is some very unconvincing miming by Tyrone Power in "Dizzy Fingers" by Zez Confrey (of "Kitten on the Keys") in "The Eddy Duchin Story", but the picture quality is very good. He must have been important to have had a film about him!
I first became aware of ED many years ago when I read of his 1938recording of a song called Ol' Man Mose. It caused much controversery in the US and was banned in Britain because it sounded very much as if the vocalist sang "f#!* it" instead of "bucket", and repeated the naughtyism three times. I've never heard it, though it is available on a CD of oddities somewhere, but apparently there is simultaneously laughter from the band, so she probably did.
This seems far removed from when I was holding forth here on Beethoven piano sonatas the other day, but we are not altogether straying from the classics. Eddy's son, Peter, a distinguished band leader and pianist himself, raised by Averell Harriman and his wife after the deaths of his parents, and very well-connected through his wife, is a patron of the Spoleto Festival, American Russian Youth Orchestra, Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society, American Ballet Theater, and a few more. A lot of fine musical blood in your family, as we might rightly expect.
Thanks, chaps - glad this is going over well. He's only a distant cousin, but there's a definite resemblance in appearance to certain family members nonetheless.
I have to say, I rather enjoyed the roller skates. Did you see the double lift? Unbelievable!
We loved it - Johnny in particular stuck the headphones on and watched it about five times in succession.
I'm looking forward nervously to finding out whether he has in mind growing up to be a great pianist or a great roller-skater...
Wow, what a find!
How many classical music blogs are there? I appreciate this.
I wanted to share a collection of notes I found from the old Bulow-Lebert edition of the Beethoven sonatas.
Here's the link:
Bulow-Lebert Music notes
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