Jean Collen's Blog, page 25
April 26, 2013
MORNING STAR on Radio Today 1485
Yesterday I went to the studios of Radio Today 1485
Radio Today 1485 studios, Jan Smuts Avenue, Parktown North, Johannesburg. Photo: Gaynor Paynter.
The beautiful studios are situated in the middle of a plant nursery in Jan Smuts Avenue, Parktown North, Johannesburg. Clare Marshall, who presents the lovely programme Morning Star on Sunday morning had read my book, Sweethearts of Song: A Personal Memoir of Anne Ziegler and Webster Booth asked me into the studios to talk to her about my close relationship with Anne and Webster. I began studying singing with them when I left school at the end of 1960 in their studios on the eighth floor of Polliack’s Corner, Johannesburg.
School of Singing and Stagecraft, Eighth Floor, 69 Pritchard Street, Johannesburg – the building with balconies to the right.
Later I acted as Webster’s studio accompanist when Anne had other engagements. I remained friends with them until their deaths. Webster died in June 1984 and Anne died in October 2003.
My book about my association with Anne Ziegler & Webster Booth.
I retired as Musical Director at St Andrew’s Church, Kensington at the end of 2005 after thirteen years, and stopped teaching classical singing and piano at the end of 2007, so I thought that talking to Clare on air might be rather daunting, but she was quite charming and soon put me at my ease. What I imagined might be an ordeal proved to be a really enjoyable experience. Clare’s Morning Star programme is on at 8.30 am (South African time) on Sunday mornings. I have listened to it for many years and can recommend it to anyone who enjoys hearing a variety of beautiful music presented by someone with a pristine radio voice.
One of the songs which will be featured on the programme on Sunday morning: http://youtu.be/if-EZpO-e9s
April 20, 2013
Book Reviews
“Sticking Around” by Bernard Spong.
Sticking around by Bernard Spong
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This is a wonderful and enlightening book by the Reverend Bernard Spong. His interesting, and sometimes painful experiences as a minister and an anti-apartheid activist in South Africa, are very different from my own and were an eye-opener to me. I can thoroughly recommend this captivating book and I am very grateful that Bernard was kind enough to send me a copy of his book. I shall treasure it.
A Week in Winter by Maeve Binchy
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This is the last book Maeve Binchy wrote before her death. I own all her books and am very sorry that I will no longer receive a new Maeve Binchy for Christmas. This book is about the various guests who spend a “Week in Winter” at Chicky’s newly-established hotel situated in a remote area on the West coast of Ireland. All the guests arrive with a variety of problems to solve, and most of them benefit from their stay at the Stone House, where the only leisure activities are walking and bird watching.
Maeve Binchy’s writing is as warm and gentle as ever, and she succeeds in creating each character in her book so that one’s interest is held in their history. I recommend this book to anyone who wants to read a satisfying yet undemanding book during the holiday season and beyond.
The Time of Our Lives by Imogen Parker
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I had nearly finished this book before I realised that many of the characters from the Palace Hotel of Kingshaven were every day versions of prominent members of the Royal Family! I won’t tell you anything more about this, but it should increase your interest in the book if you work out who these characters represent as you read.
What put me off the scent was because I thought Michael Quinn, his wife and young lover were the central characters of the story although they have no connections with Royalty at all!
Imogen Parker’s book commences at the time of the Coronation in 1953 and the first volume ends at the time of the moon-landing in 1969. Each chapter tells of events in a particular year, so there is not much close cohesion in the plot of the novel.
Imogen Parker writes fluently and the novel certainly held my interest throughout this long novel (543 pages). This is the first part of a trilogy and I look forward to reading the next two novels in the series.
The Other Family by Joanna Trollope
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I am always amazed at how well Joanna Trollope creates her varied settings in her novels – in this case, the North East of England,from where the recently dead musician Richie originated. Richie lived and worked in the North East with his first wife and son, then left them abruptly to go off to London with a younger woman, with whom he had three daughters. The northern and southern families are devastated by his sudden death and each one finds it difficult to move on with life without the presence (or absence) of likeable, but thoughtless Richie.
The book deals with the different ways in which members of both families handle the forced and unforced changes to their lives as a result of Richie’s death. As usual, the book is extremely well written and held my interest from beginning to end.
Choral Society by Prue Leith
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
The book is entitled “Choral Society”. This book is formulaic. Three women meet in a choral group. At the beginning of the book each woman has a short-coming. By the end of the book they have resolved their problems in one way or another.
As a musician who has conducted several choirs in my career I thought this book would be of interest to me. Admittedly the three main characters meet because they join a choral group, but the book deals with their separate lives and we hardly hear much about the choral society at all, except that the scratch group starts off singing Gospel songs and later is rehearsing for a performance of “Messiah”.
I have the impression that the three women are extensions of Prue Leith herself. One is a food-writer and, as in previous novels, there is far too much about cooking methods and ingredients, and descriptions of the meals the various characters eat. There are also too many details about the clothes they wear and the names of contemporary dress designers. There is even a very detailed description about a medical procedure to remove excess fluid from one of the character’s knees!
Prue Leith might have had a different editor for this book than for her earlier novels. How could the editor have overlooked so much slang, clichés, and a whopper about “the laird in the manse” which upset my Scottish sensibilities. Doesn’t everybody know that a minister inhabits a manse? What was a laird doing there?
Admittedly there was a performance of “Messiah” towards the end of the book, but it appeared to be done by chorus only without any mention of soloists. Her nebulous description of this performance reminded me of a description of a performance by a string quartet in one of Mary Wesley’s books. When she mentioned a conductor of the said quartet, I refused to go on reading it.
After the disappointment of this book I doubt whether I’ll be buying any more of Prue Leith fiction, although my cooking might benefit from reading one of her cookery books!
The Soldier’s Wife by Joanna Trollope
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Another excellent novel by Joanna Trollope. In this novel she examines the difficulties faced by soldiers returning from a dangerous tour of duty in Afghanistan. One would imagine that reunions with wives and families at home would be joyous for everyone concerned, but in this novel, this is not the case.
Joanna Trollope explores the difficulties faced by soldiers and the families who have waited to welcome them at home. In this day and age it is not enough for many soldiers’ wives to be home-makers, living for the day their husbands return safely. Some are highly educated and feel frustrated that the successful careers they enjoyed before marrying into the military cannot be fulfilled.
As in most of her other novels, Joanna Trollope manages to examine these problems with sympathy for all concerned. I need not add that she writes beautifully and creates well-rounded and distinctive characters in a few paragraphs. This is a very satisfying novel and I recommend it.
Daughters-in-Law by Joanna Trollope
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I have enjoyed most of Joanna Trollope’s novels and this one is no exception. She has an excellent writing style and is always entertaining. She is at her best describing the dynamics of family relationships and excels in defining each character clearly and laying bear the niggling tensions between family members.
In this novel the parents of three sons, each married to a very different woman, try to play too large a role in their sons’ lives, as well as in the lives of their families. The plot shows how the sons eventually manage to cut their parents’ apron strings and take their place in the adult world. After reading this book I am not struck by the dramatic significance of each twist and turn of the plot, but by the subtle nuances of it.
Relish – My Life on a Plate by Prue Leith
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I have just finished reading Prue Leith’s lively autobiography and I enjoyed it very much. I am not particularly interested in cookery, but I have fond memories of seeing Prue Leith’s mother, the brilliant South African actress, Margaret Inglis in “Separate Tables” when my family and I were on holiday in Durban in 1957.
Prue Leith is four years older than me and grew up in South Africa so we shared similar childhood experiences. I found the account of her early years in South Africa, and later years in France and the UK fascinating. With most autobiographies and biographies, the years of struggle are usually far more interesting than the years of success, as the successful years often amount to no more than a brag-list of achievements and awards.
Although Prue Leith discussed her many achievements, her story held my interest to the end of the book, as her personality and humanity shine through in her writing. Despite success, fame and riches, Prue suffered her fair share of setbacks and she does not skim over the setbacks as others embarking on writing the story of their lives might have done.
Not only did Prue succeed as a cook and caterer, but she has published a number of novels in the later part of her life. I have only read one of them but intend to read the others in due course.
Girl from the South by Joanna Trollope
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I did not enjoy this book quite as much as I enjoyed many other Joanna Trollope novels I have read. Perhaps it was because it was partly set in Charleston in South Carolina, and all the other novels have typically English settings with restrained English characters. I thought the author handled the American characters very well and created the atmosphere of the South very well, but, perhaps because I am set in my ways and thought I knew what to expect from Joanna Trollope, I would have preferred another Aga-Saga!
View all my reviews
Death Comes to Pemberley by P.D. James
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I thought that P.D. James captured the style and mood of Jane Austen’s writing in this book. She assumes that one has a thorough knowledge and understanding of “Pride and Prejudice” as she makes many references to Jane Austen’s book and even introduces characters from “Emma” towards the end of the book. The plot of “Death Comes to Pemberley” was slow-moving as one might have expected in a Jane Austen novel which concerned the minutae of the every-day life of the gentry; nearly three quarter’s of this book is taken up with the happenings of several days, seen from the points of view of the characters concerned in the murder. This necessitated a great deal of repetition of the events.
Jane Austen would probably never have concerned herself with something as distasteful as a murder, while P.D. James had to limit herself to a rather unremarkable murder mystery, quite different from the complicated modern mysteries she has written previously. After the mystery was solved I found the epilogue redundant to the plot. Why did Darcy and Elizabeth have to spend considerable time explaining to each other exactly why they acted as they did in “Pride and Prejudice”?
I enjoyed the book and admired P.D James ability to write in the style of Jane Austen, but I hope she continues to write classic murder mysteries and doesn’t repeat the Jane Austen experiment.
Passenger to Frankfurt by Agatha Christie
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
This book by Agatha Christie was different from the murder mysteries. It was written in 1970 and reminded me of Buchan’s “Thirty-nine Steps”, in that it was an adventure story where the aims of the people involved were unclear to me, and therefore fairly meaningless. The best part of the book was the quotation by Jan Smuts preceding the story: “Leadership, besides being a great creative force, can be diabolical…” I thought that this quotation could be applied to quite a few diabolical leaders, past and present.
I waded through this book, hoping that I would eventually be gripped by this tortuous tale, but I’m afraid I gave it up when I was half way through. I am too old to waste time reading books which are uncongenial and meaningless to me. I am glad that Agatha Christie did not continue writing novels like this but returned to writing tales of the detective exploits of Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple in the few remaining years of her life.
Love and War in London: A Woman’s Diary 1939-42 by Olivia Cockett
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This book focuses on the wartime diary of Olivia Cockett, which she wrote for Mass Observation. It is edited by Robert Malcolmson. Olivia was 26 when war broke out and is a singular young woman in that she had been working in a clerical position since she was 17 and having an affair since that age with a married man in his thirties, whom she met at work.
Olivia is a very intelligent young woman who read widely. She was not afraid to tackle authors such as James Joyce, T.S. Eliot and Bertrand Russell and preferred serious music to the light music she heard on the radio. Her liberal outlook on life is the opposite to the conventional outlook of her Man. Because they were unable to marry – even their attempt for him to obtain a divorce goes wrong – she has had two illegal abortions before the war.
She describes routine and unusual events of her life during the war concisely and without emotion or self-pity. Once I became used to her style of writing I found the book a fascinating insight into the life of an ordinary, yet, in many ways extraordinary, young Londoner during the war. I would recommend it to anyone who is interested in civilian life at that time.
Tulip Fever by Deborah Moggach
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I have read nearly all Deborah Moggach’s novels and enjoyed them very much, but I put off reading “Tulip Fever” as it seemed very different from her modern novels. Apparently the book was inspired by various Dutch paintings which are shown in the book and is set in 17th century Amsterdam.
The plot is rather far-fetched, bordering on fantasy, quite unlike her other well-crafted modern novels. One has to suspend belief at the twists and turns of the plot and none of the characters are well-rounded. Perhaps she meant them to be as one-dimensional as the subjects featured in the paintings. Although there were references to streets in Amsterdam, Dutch phrases, Dutch names and characters whose main diet was herring, I did not get a rich sense of time or place in this novel.
I’m glad I read the book, but I do not think it is Deborah Moggach’s best novel and it might disappoint her admirers.
Letters and Diaries of Kathleen Ferrier by Christopher Fifield
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
From 1949 to 1951 Anne Ziegler and Webster Booth lived at Frognal Cottage, Hampstead, opposite 2 Frognal Mansions, where Kathleen Ferrier lived. The Booths became friends with Kathleen when they met her walking on Hampstead Heath as they were out walking their Cairn terrier, Smoky. Webster had been booked to sing a Messiah with her in 1951, but they were both very disappointed when she had to cancel this performance because of her illness. I was singing much the same repertoire as Kathleen when I began studying with the Booths in 1961 and they often lent me her recordings from their own record collection. Thus, although Kathleen had died tragically young when I was a child, I always felt a close affinity with this wonderful woman with the unique contralto voice of the twentieth century.
I was rather disappointed to find that Kathleen Ferrier’s diaries were little more than concert dates, occasionally with brief remarks about how a particular engagement went. On reflection, she was working hard so would have had little time to write substantial diary entries at the end of a busy day.
The letters more than compensated for the brevity of the diaries. She wrote many business letters to keep her very busy career in order. While many singers might have longed for more engagements, Kathleen Ferrier was overwhelmed with offers, to the extent that she often had to turn engagements down and beg for a few days respite from her agent, Emmie Tillet. She could certainly never have undertaken such a demanding career had she been married with children. Her letters show that her extensive American tours in the late 1940s involved exhausting travel arrangements. She had to pay for her own advertising, travel, accompanist and accommodation on these tours, so she hardly made a fortune at £50 a concert.
Her affectionate, informal letters to her sister, Winifred, her father and other friends were always bright, self-deprecating and humorous. Her letters of thanks to acquaintances were always appreciative and polite. Even when she turned down songs which had been sent to her, or engagements she could not undertake, she did so in a kindly way.
Once again, it was sad to see her grave illness taking hold so that she eventually lacked health and strength to write her own letters and relied on her help-meet, Bernie to write on her behalf.
There is a good bibliography,an extensive index of works in Kathleen’s repertoire, another of places, venues and festivals, as well as a general index.
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This was an interesting and unusual novel covering several strands: the narrator’s research into Daphne du Maurier’s work; Daphne du Maurier researching the Brontes in order to write a biography of Branwell Bronte; and Symington, the disgraced Bronte expert. I found it interesting how the author interwove fictional fact with the narrator’s own story, showing similarities between all the characters of her novel. It has encouraged me to reread my collection of du Maurier novels, and to look at Branwell Bronte in a new light. I would recommend this book as a well-written, gripping and unusual novel.
The L-Shaped Room by Lynne Reid Banks
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This is one of my favourite books, which I read a few years after it was first published in 1960. It will be difficult for young readers to credit that fifty years ago it was considered a disgrace for a woman to have a baby out of wedlock and that her parents might disown her for doing so. The heroine of “The L-Shaped Room” even intends to keep her baby, which would have been unthinkable for most girls in 1960, when they were sent to homes for unmarried mothers and had their babies taken away from them at birth to be put up for adoption.
Sisters by Prue Leith
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I bought this book a year or two ago and had initially given up reading it after a few pages. I decided to try it again recently and was pleasantly surprised to find that I enjoyed it very much. Perhaps some of my enjoyment stemmed from growing up in South Africa at much the same time as Prue Leith did herself and remembering her illustrious mother, the late Margaret Inglis, who was one of South Africa’s greatest actresses of her generation.
Prue Leith had many cookery books published in the earlier part of her life. In the comparatively new genre of novel-writing she is very competent and the book held my interest. Perhaps she might have considered giving the sisters in questions more distinctive names – Carrie and Poppy can easily be mixed up. Carrie is not entirely likeable for most of the book, but (as in the advice given in most writing courses)she changes for the better as the book progresses.
My only criticism is that Prue Leith spent too much time discussing the food the characters were eating – or cooking! I suppose this is understandable as she made a great name for herself as a cook and restaurant owner.
“Sisters” is not great literature but it is a very enjoyable novel. Now that I have read it I look forward to reading more novels by Prue Leith.
The Middle Ground by Margaret Drabble
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
I am finding the book quite absorbing, although, since it was written in 1980, the feminist and political views expressed by the characters seem rather dated, in the light of hindsight. I expect they were considered quite unusual at the time. Later: I am afraid that as the book progressed I began to lose interest in the main character’s increasingly peculiar life, friends and acquaintances. I finished the book with difficulty and was very disappointed in it as Margaret Drabble has written some excellent novels and is usually one of my favourite authors. I fear this book is not in the same class as others she has written – or perhaps I lacked the intellect to enjoy it.
I have just read the fascinating story of three lively young South African girls who went to Europe in the 1960s to spend a year travelling from place to place without spending too much money on their travels. They made use of youth hostels and managed to go from one place to another by hitching rides. Admittedly they had strict rules about hitching so they never came to any harm. Somehow I don’t think it would be possible to do the same trip today as everything is so much more expensive and the South African Rand has diminished in value. The book is well-written and extensively illustrated. I recommend this book to anyone who would like to learn more about the girls’ fascinating European adventure all those years ago. The book is available in print and Kindle editions.
April 15, 2013
MY RECORD COLLECTION
While I was studying with Webster Booth and Anne Ziegler I listened to their various radio programmes and recorded some of them, but for some reason I had never thought of collecting their records at that time. When I was playing in the studio for Webster he played some reel-to-reel tapes of his recordings and allowed me to copy those with my own reel-to-reel tape recorder. It was only when I left South Africa and was living in the UK in 1966 that I began my collection of their 78rpm records.
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Anne and Webster appeared in a full-page advert for “Skol” Beer in 1961. Webster had grown a beer for the photo!
I met Margaret when I was working at the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music in Bedford Square. She had a 78rpm recording of Webster’s singing One Day When We Were Young and Sweethearts and she kindly gave it to me – the very first record in my collection. She and I went to the HMV shop in Oxford Street one lunchtime. The first record I saw there was a 45rpm of Songs That Have Sold a Million. The names of the singers were not mentioned on the cover, but somehow I thought Webster might have been one of the singers. I asked to hear the record on the headphones provided in the store. Sure enough, he was one of the singers in the medley. The other singers were Dorothy Clarke (contralto) and Foster Richardson (baritone). The original recording had been made in 1937. I added this one to my collection – I now had two records instead of one.
I began looking around second hand record shops in the St Albans area where I was living at the time and found more records to add to my collection. When I returned to South Africa on the SA Oranje in 1968 I did not pack all these records in my trunk. I left There is no Death (Johnson/O’Hara) and: Just for Today (Partridge/Seaver) (HMV B9458) behind with my parents and have never been able to find that record again although I have acquired many more since then.
Some years after I moved back to Johannesburg I found more 78rpms through adverts in Gramophone when the Rand was not in such a parlous state against the pound. These records were sent to me by post and it is a miracle that not too many of them were broken and that I could just afford to pay postage on such heavy items as well as import duty. The import duty often came to as much – if not more – than I had paid for the records in the first place.
Rococo Canada issued an LP of some of Webster’s recordings from the collection of Scott Sheldon and I heard this record first when I paid a visit to Webster in Knysna in 1973. Webster always said that HMV would only reissue an LP of his serious recordings once he was dead, but later in that decade they did issue such an LP and classified it under “historical”. Webster was pleased that the record had been issued before he died, but rather indignant at the classification.
When he and Anne returned to the UK in 1978 two further LPs were issued of their duet recordings and after Webster’s death in 1984 HMV issued The Golden Age of Webster Booth.
Booth in 1985. 
Webster had started recording for HMV in 1930, so by the late eighties there were enough recordings out of the fifty year copyright for other smaller recording companies to produce CDs of the duet and solo recordings. By the late nineteen-nineties there were a number of compilation CDs released at a time when it had become possible to restore the quality of the recordings to pristine condition.
In 1986 or 1987 Dudley Holmes, who had also copied a number of recordings directly from the tapes Webster had made, kindly sent me cassette tapes of these recordings.
I picked up other 78rpm records in charity shops and at various fêtes and at the Collectors’ Treasury, an interesting shop in Johannesburg. The Collectors’ Treasury has a great collection of 78rpm records but they were not sorted in any particular order so I made a number of excursions into the city in the late eighties to go through the dusty record collection where I usually managed to find a few of Anne and Webster’s recordings on every trip.
I bought my first CD player in 1990 at the same time as Webster’s first CD Moonlight and You was issued. As I mentioned earlier regular compilations of duet and Webster’s solo recordings were issued on CD in the 1990s, the last being Along the Road to Dreams which featured solos and duets.
This CD of Webster’s earlier recording was issued in 1989.
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Featuring solo and duet recordings. The last CD featuring Anne and Webster was issued about 1999.
I have added many recordings in my collection to YouTube and seem to have had most success in promoting these records there rather than on Facebook or in the Booth-Ziegler Yahoo Group which I run. I have 99 subscribers on YouTube and my uploaded videos have been viewed over 162,000 times – often by people who had never heard of them before.
A collection of various recordings featuring Anne Ziegler and Webster Booth.
April 14, 2013
FACEBOOK MANNERS
I wrote the bulk of this note some years ago on Facebook. I think it applies just as much today as it did two years ago. I will add a few more observations about Facebook here. Comments are welcome and if I have offended you by this post, feel free to unfriend me on Facebook!
I have made about 150 friends on Facebook. Some I actually know; others I have not met before, but we seem to have the same interests, and there is a certain amount of communication between us, even if it amounts to nothing more than liking each other’s posts, wishing each other a happy birthday and passing the occasional comment on something that might interest us.
Other “friends” ignore me - perhaps for reasons of their own - but why did they befriend me in the first place? Just to add to my name to the hundreds of other Facebook friends on their list? Surely they have the strength to click the “like” button if I wish them happy birthday, or even make a very occasional comment so that I know they are still there? In this category I include some “friends” I have known personally for years. Do they look at my posts with a superior sneer and conclude that I am silly for posting them on Facebook?
March 2011 was a bad month for birthday greetings and March 2013 has not been any better. Very few of the March birthday boys and girls liked or thanked me for wishing them happy birthday. How rude is that? They obviously don’t think my well-meant birthday greetings are worth the bother of a collective “thank you” or even a “like”. The occasional “like” or “thank you” would not go amiss. At least I would not have the feeling that I’m communicating with the ether.
I share recordings, news and blog posts about my former teachers and life-long friends, Webster Booth and Anne Ziegler. I also have pages for them on Facebook: Webster Booth (tenor 1902-1984 (44 likes) and Anne Ziegler- Webster Booth, British Duettists, (68 likes) and I run the Booth-Ziegler Yahoo Group (34 members!) They meant a great deal to me and my intention was to keep their names alive, but this is a losing battle. I realise that their recordings are not to everyone’s taste as one of my Facebook friends told me recently – at least he was honest! Other friends who knew them very well – two are even related to them – ignore these posts. Just as I could always sense whether an audience was enjoying my stage performance or thinking it pretty awful, I have the same sense on Facebook, apart from a few obvious exceptions – I would have given up a long time ago without them! My one consolation is that my recordings of Webster and Anne’s solo and duet recordings on YouTube are warmly received, often by people who had never heard of them before.
On the plus side, I have made some interesting new friends, followed some fascinating pages, and rediscovered some old friends who do keep in touch with me on Facebook. I hope you are in this last category!
Jean Collen – original post written in 2011/updated 14 April 2013.
April 13, 2013
ACCOMPANYING FOR WEBSTER BOOTH
I have published this post to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary since I first played for Webster Booth in his studio in Johannesburg. The bulk of the material is from a chapter in my book:
Sweethearts of Song: A Personal Memoir of Anne Ziegler and Webster Booth
This post has also been added to my Ziegler-Booth blog and can be seen at Accompanying for Webster
ACCOMPANYING FOR WEBSTER
On April 22nd 2013 it will be fifty years since I first started accompanying for Webster Booth in the studio where he and Anne Ziegler taught singing and stagecraft. It sounds like a long time ago but I can remember a great deal of that remarkable period of my life as though it was yesterday. 1963 was certainly one of the happiest years of my life when I had few worries and every day was an exciting carefree adventure. In 1964 my life was touched with sadness and tragedy and was never as perfect as it had been in the shining year that was 1963.
At the beginning of that year, I was just nineteen, with the promise of a happy future ahead of me. I had been learning singing with Anne and Webster for two years and I was planning to do my teaching diplomas in singing, although I was hoping that if I worked hard enough I would not have to depend entirely on teaching to make my living in music.
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Webster and Anne at the time I was studying with them.
Anne Ziegler & Webster Booth (1963)
Me at about the time I was accompanying for Webster.
Jean Campbell Collen (1965)
Not only did Anne teach singing with Webster, but she also acted as studio accompanist, so it was usually Webster who answered the door to new arrivals and made frequent cups of tea for everyone.
Webster, Leslie or Boo, as Anne called him, was always even tempered, with his cheerful, “Hello dear. Would you like some tea?” when I arrived for my lesson at their eighth floor studio in Polliack’s Corner at the corner of Pritchard and Eloff Streets in the city of Johannesburg.
Polliack’s Corner. Studio was on eighth floor of building with balconies to the right of the photo.
Of course he was aware that he had an outstanding voice, but he was devoid of the conceit one might have expected from a legendary tenor. I still have a vision of him in his shirt sleeves, peering through his horn-rimmed bifocals at one score or another, perspiring in the Johannesburg summer heat to which he was unaccustomed. He sight-read songs better than most of us could ever dream of singing them.
Early in 1963 my father heard a recording I had made of myself singing
March 28, 2013
BOOTH-ZIEGLER YAHOO GROUP
If you are interested in the lives and careers of Anne Ziegler and Webster Booth, you might like to join the Booth-Ziegler Yahoo group. The group was founded on 5 May 2010. We have discussions about Anne and Webster’s duet and solo recordings and aspects of their illustrious careers which spanned the 1920s to the 1990s. There are photographs, documents and recordings on the group page and I give all members access to my Sky Drive, where I have posted a number of recordings unavailable elsewhere on the Internet. At the moment there are 34 members in the group, but not all members post or take part in discussions. If we could attract some enthusiastic people to the group, I’m sure it would be livelier than it is at present. Please consider joining us by filling in the form below. I will be happy to welcome you.
Jean Collen
Moderator.
28 March 2013
JOIN BOOTH-ZIEGLER YAHOO GROUP
March 11, 2013
78rpm Collectors Community – Mp3 Music Player Album – Swing High, Swing Low (Veronique)
I have added three duets featuring Webster Booth and Anne Ziegler to the 78rpm Collectors Community – an ideal community to join if you listen to – or collect 78rpm recordings. I do not charge for any of my downloads.
78rpm Collectors Community – Mp3 Music Selling Player Album – Swing High, Swing Low (Veronique).
February 26, 2013
78rpm Collectors Community – Mp3 Music Selling Player Album – Webster Booth (tenor)
78rpm Collectors Community – Mp3 Music Selling Player Album – Webster Booth (tenor).
I have added several 78rpm recordings featuring Webster Booth to this community. There are a great many varied recordings on this site which may be downloaded. I recommend it to collectors and everyone interested in learning more about 78rpm records
January 21, 2013
WEBSTER BOOTH – ONE HUNDRED AND ELEVENTH ANNIVERSARY OF HIS BIRTH
http://ziegler-booth.blogspot.com
I have posted a tribute to Webster Booth on the occasion of the 111th anniversary of his birth on my blog which is all about Webster Booth and Anne Ziegler. There is a full episode of reminiscences by Anne and Webster in the article. Episode 2 of the reminiscences can be found on YouTube in two parts. See my channel: http://www.youtube.com/duettists
December 30, 2012
Jean Collen on WordPress – 2012 in review
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
600 people reached the top of Mt. Everest in 2012. This blog got about 5,300 views in 2012. If every person who reached the top of Mt. Everest viewed this blog, it would have taken 9 years to get that many views.
Click here to see the complete report.
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