The Winter Singers - Purcell: King Arthur, plus Berger and Holland - December 1990

The Last Days of Leonard Bernstein

Leonard Bernstein. Photo courtesy Stage+

By John Rockwell

Although Leonard Bernstein, the famed American composer and conductor who died on Sunday evening in his Manhattan apartment, had been ill for months, he remained alert and inquisitive and looked forward to resuming his composing and perhaps even his conducting careers.

While he had announced his retirement from the concert stage earlier in the week, his death came as a sad surprise, according to hints from his inner circle of relatives and friends. Spiritually, he remained the youthful Lenny, ebullient and zestfully alive, that audiences had loved for nearly 50 years.

Bernstein's family, manager, physician and press representative have declined public comment on his last months. According to his physician, Dr. Kevin M. Cahill, Bernstein died of a heart attack brought on by ''progressive emphysema complicated by a pleural tumor and a series of pulmonary infections,'' as he had described the conductor's condition earlier in the week.

Cigarettes to the End

That emphysema had been a longstanding condition, and for years he had also suffered from asthma attacks and bouts of bronchitis. At a memorial service in 1986 for Alan Jay Lerner, Bernstein's admirers held up a sign saying, ''We love you - stop smoking.'' But despite all the illnesses and the urgings, he couldn't stop, right up to his death.

''The great thing about conducting,'' he said at the time, ''is you don't smoke and you breathe in great gobs of oxygen.''

This spring and summer, however, Bernstein's smoking and his habit of socializing with students, friends and fellow musicians until the early hours of the morning began to catch up with him. ''Lenny is the only conductor I have ever seen,'' one orchestra official remarked this summer, ''who simultaneously gasps into a respirator and lights up a cigarette the minute he comes off the stage.’”

Published at The New York Times, October 16, 1990

The Winter Singers - Tallis: The Lamentations of Jeremiah, plus Kodaly and Brahms - June 1990

Sammy Davis, Jr.

 

(Born December 8, 1925, New york, New York; died May 16, 1990)

Caesar's Palace, Las Vegas, 1976: The small man center stage has removed his coat and tie. His face has grown moist with perspiration. He reaches for a tambourine, slaps it against his hip. In his own words, Sammy Davis Jr. is "revving up." The music changes and the "monster of musical motion" takes off--with "Mr. Bojangles," "That Old Black Magic," "Candy Man," proving his mastery of what has been called his "art of establishing immediate, joyful rapture with audiences." Flashback to almost 50 years earlier: Somewhere on the vaudeville circuit, 1929: a silent four-year-old human prop appears on stage for the first time with his father Sammy Davis Sr. and "adopted" uncle Will Mastin. He will soon begin to accompany th in "flashdancing" routines. The years will go by. The lights of vaudeville will dim and go out. Sammy Sr. and Will will fade. Sammy Jr. will go on.

Sammy Davis Jr. was born in New York's Harlem on December 8, 1925. His father was then a lead dancer in Mastin's "Holiday in Dixieland," a vaudeville troupe in which young Sammy's mother, Elvera (Sanchez) Davis, was the lead chorus girl. His paternal grandmother, Rosa B. ("Mama") Davis, reared him at 140th Street and Eighth Avenue until he was two and a half, when his parents broke up materially and professionally, and Sammy Sr. got custody of his son. 

Little Sammy, who was called "Poppa" by his father and, for some equally obscure reason, "Mose Gastin" by Uncle Will, traveled and performed with the Mastin troupe, The youngster made his motion picture debut in 1933 in Rufus Jones for President, a two-reeler filmed at Brooklyn's Warner studios, in which he played a little boy who falls asleep in the lap of his mother (Ethel Waters) and dreams he is elected President of the United States.

As the years went by and vaudeville waned with the rise of motion pictures, the Mastin troupe got smaller and its name larger -- first "Will Mastin's Gang. Featuring Little Sammy" then "The Will Mastin Trio, Featuring Sammy Davis Jr." 

It was during those years that Davis met Frank Sinatra, who was then with Tommy Dorsey's band, and Bill ("Bojangles") Robinson, the "Mr. Bojangles," earlier popularized in the song by Jerry Jeff Walker and the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, which later became a standard song in Davis' act.

He was drafted into the Army when he was 18, and after encountering blatant racial prejudice for the first time and countering it with his fists, he was transferred to Special Services. There he did shows in camps across the country, "gorging" himself "on the joy of being liked," as he described it in his 1965 autobiography, Yes I Can. He combed every audience for "haters" and, when he spotted one, would give his performance "an extra burst of strength and energy" because he "had to get those guys," to "neutralize them and make them acknowledge" him.

During the lean post-World War II years, breaking in a night club act in the "boondocks" and occasionally in Las Vegas, which was in its infancy as a "show town," he perfected his performance, doing flashdancing and impressions of popular screen stars and singers, playing trumpet and drums -- and singing, with Sammy Sr. and Uncle Will's soft-shoe and tap as background. During this period, he recorded some songs for Capitol. One of them, a rendition of "The Way You Look Tonight," was chosen 1946 Record of the year by Metronome magazine, which also named him the year's "Most Outstanding New Personality." Over the following two years, the trio toured for six months with Mickey Rooney, played a three-week engagement on a bill headed by Frank Sinatra at New York's Capitol Theatre and had a featured spot in a Bob Hope benefit show.

It was through Jack Benny, however, that they won a coveted booking at Ciro's in Hollywood and an appearance withemeddie Cantor on the "Colgate Comedy Hour," a television series for which they became the summer replac ent. After the trio's smash hit engagement at the Copacabana in New York, Decca Records signed Davis to a contract. His first album, Starring Sammy Davis Jr., included impersonations. Another LP, Just for Lovers, starred him solely as himself.

It was in 1954 that an automobile accident cost him his left eye. During his confin ent in Community Hospital in San Bernadino, he began his conversion to Judaism. When he was discharged from the hospital, clubs nationwide were clamoring for him and the trio. With battered face and eye-patch, Davis made his return to the nightclub circuit with them. After a succession of successful club appearances, he made his Broadway debut in 1956, with Sam Sr. and Will, in Mr. Wonderful, a musical comedy created for him.

Davis made his solo debut on television on "The Ed Sullivan Show" and did some serious acting in episodes of the "General Electric Theatre" and "The Dick Powell Show." In 1965, on the "Patty Duke Show," he played himself in "Will the Real Sammy Davis Pleaseemstand Up?" Meanwhile his recordings were making records -- "Hey There," "Birth of the Blues," The Lady Is a Tramp," "Candy Man," "Gonna Build a Mountain," and "Who Can I Turn To?" He co-starred in 1958 as the jive talking sailor in the film Anna Lucasta and the next year as the mischievous Sportin' Life in the screen version of Porgy and Bess.

Among the numerous additional films in which he appeared are Pepe (in a cameo role as himself), Convicts Four, Three Penny Opera, Nightmare in the Sun, A Man Called Adam, and Sweet Charity, and as a member of the "Rat Pack," a group of performers headed by Frank Sinatra, in a number of pictures including Ocean's Eleven, Sergeants Three, and Robin and the Seven Hoods, as well as Johnny Cool, Salt and Pepper, and One More Time.

In the mid-1960s, he returned to the stage as the star of Broadway's Golden Boy, which earned him Cue magazine's Entertainer of the Year award. His numerous television specials have also been widely acclaimed.

First published at The Kennedy Center.

Jazz singer Sarah Vaughan dies

Sarah Vaughan in Sydney in 1973. Photo by Harry Monty, courtesy Jazz Journal

HIDDEN HILLS, Calif. -- Sarah Vaughan, a legendary entertainer whose unique vocal artistry over a half-century career changed the art of jazz singing, died of lung cancer at age 66.

'The most God-given voice has just went away,' said singer Tony Bennett, currently on tour in England.

Vaughan died at 9:20 p.m. Tuesday at her home in the exclusive community of Hidden Hills in the San Fernando Valley northwest of Los Angeles, said Los Angeles Times jazz critic Leonard Feather, who said he has known Vaughan her entire professional life.

'I feel lucky to have had the chance to share this world with Sarah,' said trumpeter Miles Davis. 'She advanced her musical artistry to the point where she was more concerned with the texture of sound, the surfaces of sounds, the joy of sound. Her music was in a place where nobody had ever been.'

Drummer Roy Haynes, who worked in Vaughan's trio from 1953-58, said she was like family to him. 'Playing with her was like playing with Lester Young and Charlie Parker. It had that kind of excitement for me,' Haynes said.

'I'm very devastated that she is gone,' said jazz singer Helen Merrill. 'Sarah was the greatest jazz singer that the world of music ever produced. I liked her range and her enormous daring. She was the epitome of what a musicianly singer is. She was blessed with an instrument that allowed her to convey all of her musical thoughts.'

Vaughan's manager, Harold Levy, said, 'She was a great artist. She was a wonderful family lady. She was a very special person who maintained some of the innocence of her early years. This was a warm and wonderful human being.'

Vaughan, who got her break at 16 at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, was nicknamed 'Sassy' for her onstage demeanor and 'The Divine One' for her voice.

What she did with her voice, a dark contralto made huskier through the years from smoking, made it made it easy for listeners to exaggerate her range.

'They say four octaves but it's not true. Two octaves and a fifth maybe,' Vaughan said in a 1986 interview. 'Maybe a little more.'

She darted and swooped up and down the register, embellishing on the way. Her lower register richened and deepened over the years but her falseto remained effortless and pure.

She was a popular performer -- in jazz clubs, at jazz festivals worldwide, and with symphonies, where her material favored George Gershwin.

Her style was tied closely to the improvisational ideas of the bop and post-bop musicians she played with early in her career. She sometimes forgot lyrics because she was thinking of the notes and the phrasings, like a horn player.

She was a stickler for the right tempo on each song and reworked and built on melodies. Her voice would jump an octave, then slide smoothly back down.

In spite of her decades as a performer, she was always nervous before going on stage, wringing her hands and mopping her brow in the wings and on stage.

Vaughan was born March 27, 1924, into a musical family in Newark, N.J. Her father, Asbury, was a carpenter who played guitar and sang folk songs. Sarah joined her mother, Ada, in the church choir and continued her education in piano and voice at a high school for the arts.

At age 16 she entered an amateur show at the Apollo. She sang 'Body and Soul' in such a way that stunned singers Billy Eckstine and Ella Fitzgerald, who were in the audience.

Before the day was out, Fitzgerald warned her about agents and managers and Eckstine recommended that Earl 'Fatha' Hines hire her. She joined as vocalist and second pianist and when the Hines band broke up a year later, Eckstine formed his own band, hiring Vaughan as his co-vocalist.

Vaughan, recorded her share of jazz classics, including 'Don't Blame Me' and 'I Cover The Waterfront.' Her first hit, 'It's Magic,' sold more than 2 million records.

Her most popular songs, staples of her 1980s concert repertoire, included 'Misty,' 'Perdido' and 'Send In the Clowns,' which served as her usual concert-closing encore.

Though she won countless awards over the years as best jazz vocalist, Vaughan said she believed there was no such thing as a jazz singer.

'That's a title. They give us all titles,' she said. 'They've got so many titles I don't know which music is which. People tend to categorize. I just sing. I sing whatever I can.'

In 1985, Vaughan was featured on the album 'The Planet is Alive ... Let It Live!' Its foundation was six poems written by Pope John Paul II when he was a young Polish priest named Karol Wojtyla.

In 1986, she joined opera diva Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, Jose Carreras and Mandy Patinkin in a studio recording of Rodgers and Hammerstein's 'South Pacific,' in which she sang the role of Bloody Mary.

In her later years, Vaughan remained fussy about her repertoire. Her most recent top-selling recording was a Latin album, 'Brazilian Romances,' recorded in 1987.

Vaughan married trumpeter George Treadwell in 1946. During their 10-year marriage, he served as her manager. Her marriage to former pro football player Clyde Atkins ended in 1966. In 1971, Vaughan married Las Vegas restaurateur Marshall Fisher, divorcing him in 1977. Her fourth marriage, in 1978, to musician Waymon Reed, was her briefest.

Vaughan is survived by her mother and an adopted daughter, Deborah.

First published at United Press International (UPI), April 4, 1990

The Winter Singers - Heinrich Schütz - St Matthew Passion