Random Prompt #298: What is your favorite work of art?
Random Prompt #298: What is your favorite work of art?
Looking up and to the right from my desk chair, near the door frame, I have a painting of the iconic 1949 Herman Leonard photograph of Ella Fitzgerald at the mic in Club Downbeat in New York City with Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman looking on from a front row table. I had been trying to buy a print of this photo for a long time, but for some reason it was out of stock all across the web, which prompted my fabulous, multi-talented daughter, Madeline to do this painting for me and it’s my favorite...for several reasons. I grew up in a quasi-jazz house in the 60's and 70's, That is to say the background noise in our house was the jazz my parents listened to on the local public radio station WBFO 88.7 or the long defunct WADV 106.5. Today, 88.7 is public affairs NPR and 106.5 is new country and plays endless sagas about faux cowboys drinking beer on the back of pickup trucks. While WBFO played it pretty straight, WADV had more personality with Buffalo Broadcast Hall of Famer, Fred Klestine spinning a unique jazz blend and wishing you a salubrious day. Or you could hear Bernie Sandler’s Big Band program playing Count Basie and Bennie Goodman, which I got, I guess, by osmosis. As great as Basie and Goodman might have been, to my teenage eyes and ears they could hardly compete with the coolness of The Beatles and Bowie. By the late 70’s though, my attitudes toward jazz started to change when I heard stuff by Charlie Parker, John Coltrane and Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue. through my friend the Doctor, who was and is, always a step ahead of everyone else. But, being a kind of music snob there were limits to what I would listen to and I dismissed anyone who didn’t compose their own music and deemed jazz vocalists as mere interpreters of song. Frank Sinatra was chief among these pedestrian interpreters and by the late 70’s who wasn’t sick of the idiotic My Way or New York, New York? While my snobbery remains largely intact, it has become more informed and less monolithic. I still don’t quite get Sir Francis Blue Eyes, but the bluesy heartbreak of Billie Holiday, the depth and range of
Nina Simone
and the elegant grace of Ella Fitzgerald have rendered all of my foolish objections and resistance to jazz vocalists... silly. Listening to the ethereal phrasing of Ella on a song like Miss Otis Regrets, you are drawn into a drama where you can’t help but feel sympathy for a condemned adulterer meeting her fate. There’s not a single ounce of fat or a wasted breath in this vocal or the whole Ella Fitzgerald oeuvre.
Which, brings us to the photo. In both his narrative fiction and bouncy jazz poetry Jack Kerouac created a multitude of scenes just like the one depicted here in Leonard’s 1949 photo. Besides seeing it, just like in Kerouac I can so smell the smoke wafting in that room, I can hear waitresses taking orders, glasses clinking the kitchen door opening and closing while Ella belts out something snazzy like the The Lady is A Tramp to the stunned onlookers, chief among them Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman. Or maybe something more mellow like the 1944 number one hit IntoEach Life Some Rain Must Fall. The key to the whole photo is that joyous expression on Duke’s face because sitting at that front row table, no matter what Ella Fitzgerald was singing, that would be your expression too. Duke’s and Benny’s expressions are muted in Madeline’s impressionistic painting, but the sense of excitement remains and is heightened by the orangish-yellowish-halloweenish background fire Ella is creating with her vocals. Despite the swirling fire everyone is rapt with attention and bearing witness to the first lady of song who could be a real heart breaker duetting with Ink Spots or party girl lost in The Frim Fram Sauce with Louis Armstrong.
No matter how great a song or painting is, they get old and worn out. At first you stop really hearing or seeing them, but eventually your indifference might turn to annoyance. It’s been years since I put Madeline’s painting up on my wall and it still excites me and evokes the sound of Ella Fitzgerald’s graceful and beautiful voice in my head every time I look at it. It's as brillant today as the day I hung it up. In my book that makes it a favorite, multidimensional work of art.
Looking up and to the right from my desk chair, near the door frame, I have a painting of the iconic 1949 Herman Leonard photograph of Ella Fitzgerald at the mic in Club Downbeat in New York City with Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman looking on from a front row table. I had been trying to buy a print of this photo for a long time, but for some reason it was out of stock all across the web, which prompted my fabulous, multi-talented daughter, Madeline to do this painting for me and it’s my favorite...for several reasons. I grew up in a quasi-jazz house in the 60's and 70's, That is to say the background noise in our house was the jazz my parents listened to on the local public radio station WBFO 88.7 or the long defunct WADV 106.5. Today, 88.7 is public affairs NPR and 106.5 is new country and plays endless sagas about faux cowboys drinking beer on the back of pickup trucks. While WBFO played it pretty straight, WADV had more personality with Buffalo Broadcast Hall of Famer, Fred Klestine spinning a unique jazz blend and wishing you a salubrious day. Or you could hear Bernie Sandler’s Big Band program playing Count Basie and Bennie Goodman, which I got, I guess, by osmosis. As great as Basie and Goodman might have been, to my teenage eyes and ears they could hardly compete with the coolness of The Beatles and Bowie. By the late 70’s though, my attitudes toward jazz started to change when I heard stuff by Charlie Parker, John Coltrane and Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue. through my friend the Doctor, who was and is, always a step ahead of everyone else. But, being a kind of music snob there were limits to what I would listen to and I dismissed anyone who didn’t compose their own music and deemed jazz vocalists as mere interpreters of song. Frank Sinatra was chief among these pedestrian interpreters and by the late 70’s who wasn’t sick of the idiotic My Way or New York, New York? While my snobbery remains largely intact, it has become more informed and less monolithic. I still don’t quite get Sir Francis Blue Eyes, but the bluesy heartbreak of Billie Holiday, the depth and range of
Nina Simone
and the elegant grace of Ella Fitzgerald have rendered all of my foolish objections and resistance to jazz vocalists... silly. Listening to the ethereal phrasing of Ella on a song like Miss Otis Regrets, you are drawn into a drama where you can’t help but feel sympathy for a condemned adulterer meeting her fate. There’s not a single ounce of fat or a wasted breath in this vocal or the whole Ella Fitzgerald oeuvre.
Which, brings us to the photo. In both his narrative fiction and bouncy jazz poetry Jack Kerouac created a multitude of scenes just like the one depicted here in Leonard’s 1949 photo. Besides seeing it, just like in Kerouac I can so smell the smoke wafting in that room, I can hear waitresses taking orders, glasses clinking the kitchen door opening and closing while Ella belts out something snazzy like the The Lady is A Tramp to the stunned onlookers, chief among them Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman. Or maybe something more mellow like the 1944 number one hit IntoEach Life Some Rain Must Fall. The key to the whole photo is that joyous expression on Duke’s face because sitting at that front row table, no matter what Ella Fitzgerald was singing, that would be your expression too. Duke’s and Benny’s expressions are muted in Madeline’s impressionistic painting, but the sense of excitement remains and is heightened by the orangish-yellowish-halloweenish background fire Ella is creating with her vocals. Despite the swirling fire everyone is rapt with attention and bearing witness to the first lady of song who could be a real heart breaker duetting with Ink Spots or party girl lost in The Frim Fram Sauce with Louis Armstrong. No matter how great a song or painting is, they get old and worn out. At first you stop really hearing or seeing them, but eventually your indifference might turn to annoyance. It’s been years since I put Madeline’s painting up on my wall and it still excites me and evokes the sound of Ella Fitzgerald’s graceful and beautiful voice in my head every time I look at it. It's as brillant today as the day I hung it up. In my book that makes it a favorite, multidimensional work of art.
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