Sleazy, sweaty, brassy... the music behind noir movies

I'll start with Henry Mancini's "Main Title" from Orson Welles's Touch of Evil  (1958):

Here's Duke Ellington's wonderfully swaggering"Upper and Outest" from Otto Preminger's Anatomy of a Murder (1959):

The extraordinary life of Doc Pomus - polio victim, white blues singer, and a truly great songwriter

Between the end of the first wave of genuine, raucous, gutbucket, rootsy Rock and Roll (1959) and the British Invasion (1963), most decent pop songs were written by fourteen Jews (eleven men, three women) working out of two office blocks on New York's Broadway - the Brill Building at 1619, and one that didn't have a name at 1650. At the time, the only one of these writers known to the public was Neil Sedaka, who recorded his own songs and who - despite being a pudgy little dweeb with a somewhat mincing manner - scored a large number of hits with expertly-crafted musical lollipops such as "Oh! Carol", "Calendar Girl" and "Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen". Another - Carole King - would go on to record Tapestry, of the biggest-selling albums of the '70s. But the four greatest songwriters working out of these two buildings were undoubtedly Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, and Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman...

Hollywood musicals of the 1930s: "Footlight Parade" and "Dames" to "King of Jazz" and "Cavalcade"

The "Shanghai Lil" sequence from Footlight Parade (1933) is my all-time favourite. Who could ask for more? You've got one of Harry Warren and Al Dubin's best songs, with the Hebrew musical influence at it's strongest, i.e. it's basically an up-tempo number in a minor key (like "42nd Street" and "Puttin' On the Ritz"); we're treated to...

The ten greatest/funniest/etc. operas I've recently watched, Part 2: Der Rosenkavalier, Bluebeard's Castle, Katya Kabanova, Wozzeck and Lady Macbeth of Mtensk

(You can find the first part of this post here.)

6. I hope I manage to squeeze in another viewing of Richard Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier (1911), which is, quite simply, one of the most enjoyable operas I've ever seen - and the music is certainly some of the loveliest I've ever heard. While Der Rosenkavalier harks back to frolicsome, melody-laden, semi-comic operas of earlier eras - in particular, to Mozart (as well as to more recent operettas, such as Franz Lehar's amusing soufflé, The Merry Widow), many of its themes are surprisingly adult - the way the Marschallin acknowledges the impending loss of her sexual allure by helping her young lover, Count Octavian, to unite him with his true love, the innocent Sophie (who's far closer to his own age), by helping him to prise the girl from the grasp of the her fiancé, the morally disgusting Baron Ochs, is truly touching...

The ten greatest/funniest/most interesting operas I've recently watched, Part 1: Parsifal, Orfeo and Euridice, The Barber of Seville, Der Freischutz and L'elisir d'amore

I have somehow managed to watch 35 operas since the end of November. I so enjoyed the experience of listening to the whole of The Ring Cycle on CD that I decided to try one or two others, and it just snowballed from there. I haven't enjoyed all of them - for a variety of reasons, Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress, Donizetti's Lucia Di Lammermoor and Bellini's Norma all failed to hit the spot - but my response to the majority has been overwhelmingly positive. Here's the first half of my top ten:

The fat lady's been doing a lot of singing, because I'm in the middle of an extended Operathon: Aida, Carmen, and Giulio Cesare

I was so wildly enthused by listening to the whole of the Ring Cycle at the end of November, I decided to seek out a few more - only, this times, ones I hadn't already seen or heard. Given my somewhat obsessive nature, this turned out be 32 more operas between the start of December and yesterday morning, despite two hospice stints. My main guide as to what to watch has been a Guardian article, Top 50 Operas, by the paper's classical music critic, Fiona Maddocks, backed up by Rupert Christiansen's Faber Pocket Guide to Opera, Opera by Alan Riding and Leslie Downer (part of DK's Eyewitness Companions series), and Michael Tanner's The Faber Pocket Guide to Wagner - every one a winner. I haven't had to buy any DVDs, because every opera I've seen has been available on Sky Arts catch-up, YouTube, or as part of my Amazon Prime Video membership. I've learned a thing or two during the process:

Listening again to the whole of Wagner's Ring Cycle made me realise what I've been getting wrong about Opera all these years

It's not that I don't enjoy opera: it's just that I've never quite found the best way to enjoy it to the full - i.e. to be truly immersed in it, to be overwhelmed by it. I've attended a few live performances (about 30-35, I suppose),  I own and have listened to quite a few vinyl box-sets, and I've enjoyed CDs of highlights of individual operas and single-artist compilations of great arias and duets etc. But none of them has truly hit the spot in the way that so many live performances and recordings of symphonies and concertos have. I used to blame the mode of consumption...

All the cats join in - swing classics from the likes of Cab Calloway, Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman and Lionel Hampton

That video of Cab Calloway and his Orchestra performing "Jumpin' Jive" (the dancers trying to destroy their own bodies were the incomparably wonderful Nicholas Brothers) comes from...

The Rise of the Theremin: 1949 and 1951 ensured a decade of creepy movie soundtracks

I've always responded like a Pavlov dog to the sound of a theremin on a movie soundtrack.There's something about the instrument's quivering, imprecise, other-worldy tone which causes instant cognitive dissonance. We know that something abnormal and possibly dangerous is happening, either inside the head of the character we're watching, or, in the case of science fiction films, to our planet. The Soviet inventor Léon Theremin patented his creation in 1928, and it was first used in a film score by Shostakovich for 1931's Odna. But it was eighteen years before it graced a Hollywood movie: Miklós Rózsa used it for Hitchcock's Spellbound (1949) to convey Gregory Peck's psychosis:

Farewell, Tony Joe White - here are 12 slices of your very own brand of swamp magic

(Worth listening to just for the way he manages to make "voluptuous" sound so, well, voluptuous.) "High Sheriff of Calhoun Parish" (or, if you prefer, "Hah Chef of Calhoun Paish") was the stand-out track on...

Some real gems from "1001 Songs You Must Hear Before You Die"

Sorry if this strikes anyone as ghoulish, but I downloaded 1001 Songs You Must Hear Before You Die a few days ago (having gone through 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die the previous week). I've reached the early '70s in the song book, and, apart from non-Anglosphere numbers, I don't appear to have missed much. However there were a few tracks on the list I'd never heard, and some interesting ones buried in the text along the way. Here's a few of them, starting with Sol Hoopii's delightful "Hula Girl" from 1934:

Fancy some cool music to cool you down? Well, you've come to the wrong place...

And these...

Chips Moman, the Memphis Boys and the American Sound Studio hit factory - ten magical recordings

I'm not a popular music expert, so I could have this all wrong, but the history of influential Memphis recording studios seems to go something like this: Between 1954 and 1958, Sam Phillips's Sun Studio changed popular music forever by giving the world Elvis Presley and rockabilly. In the early '60s, after Sun had pretty much set, the minor Hi Records label, operating at Royal Studios,  produced...

An American school receptionist signals the start of summer by belting out Etta James's "At Last" over the PA

I'm not sure my old school would have condoned...

My third - and final - Desert Island Discs selection: from Snow in San Anselmo to Uptown Funk

I produced my first Desert Island Discs selection in 2014, and the second a few weeks ago.  That last one took me up the late '70s. It's now the early '80s, and I'm on holiday with a girlfriend in a dull, dusty, unfriendly Spanish coastal town full of stolid German holidaymakers - because her parents own an apartment there. I hate the food, the beach is nothing but pebbles, and the evenings are made unbearable by the constant buzz-saw whine of kids riding mopeds up and down the strip below.  I'm overweight, unhappy, and drinking far too much. My writing career's heading down the crapper, the long-term relationship I'm in is floundering, my life's going nowhere, and I have absolutely no idea how to fix things. There's a tape of the Van Morrison LP Hard Nose the Highway in the apartment, and I find myself listening to one track - "Snow in San Anselmo" - over and over again. I should hate it, because it keeps breaking into jazz,  it's one of those pop songs which sounds religious without actually being so, and Van Morrison's "irritating vocal mannerisms" dial is set to 11. And yet...

My Desert Island Discs Part 2 (of 3) - including Lotte Lenya, Wagner...and "Popcorn"!

Family members have been exchanging lists of songs that remind them strongly of specific times and places in their lives - happy and sad. I posted my version here three-and-a-half years ago. Feeling a bit left out, I've come up with an alternative version of that original selection - and (bad luck) there's a third on the way! As with my first go, these are by no means my favourite records - they're just ones I can't hear without instantly recalling a specific place, person or event (sometimes all three). I'll start in the purple-carpeted sitting room of my family's second rented home in Wimbledon, which looks out onto a shared garden and a mysterious, tree-shrouded Le Grand Meaulnes-style domain dotted with classical statues beyond it. I'm about nine, I suppose. I've found this...

The Grønmark Blog's ten favourite 50s rock'n'roll guitar pickers - from Cliff Gallup and Danny Cedrone to Roland Janes and Duane Eddy

When Gene Vincent turned up for his first recording session in Nashville on 4th May, 1956, producer Ken Nelson had session musicians standing by in the case the band weren't up to the task - standard procedure back then. When Vincent's lead guitarist, Cliff Gallup, plugged in his Gretsch 6128 with Bigsby vibrato tail-piece and played his first solo on "Race With the Devil", the session men packed up their instruments and left. Here's why:

Gallup's playing is about as inventive and witty...

"The Best of 60s Elvis, Vol 1" - an imaginary CD

I'm having a whale of a time working my way through Shane Brown's Reconsider Baby: Elvis Presley - A Listener's Guide, which concentrates on the music, rather than the folderol. I wasted the best part of two hours listening to Elvis's 1960s output yesterday, trawling for any good stuff I might have missed. One or two tracks popped up, but, on the whole, the experience was as maddening as one might have expected. After all, we're talking about the man who went from recording the glorious "Little Sister" in 1961 - and the more-then-acceptable "Return to Sender" in 1962 - to committing the abomination that was "There's) No Room to Rhumba in a Sports Car" in 1963, the anodyne "Kiss Me Quick" in '64, and the inane "Do the Clam"  in '65  (the last two released as singles as the British Invasion raged!). The first signs that his mojo was returning...

CW Stoneking's delightful version of the classic modern pop ditty, "Seven Nation Army"

I was going to ask readers to time how long it took them to recognise it as The White Stripes' "Seven Nation Army" - but then I realised the answer would be staring them in the face as soon as they clicked on it:

Jack White, who wrote and first recorded "Seven Nation  Army", seems to have approved of that cover...

Cover story: Jerry Lee Lewis was the best rock'n'roll cover artist of them all - don't discuss, just agree

I'm not saying Jerry Lee Lewis's "Jailhouse Rock" is better than Elvis's - but he came close with this 1958 version:

I've never been that keen on near-contemporary cover versions of pop songs. I suspect...