America's greatest living composers...today

77 years ago this past Sunday, a special concert took place at the California Coliseum in San Francisco, CA. 

On Tuesday, 9-24-1940, America's top living composers and lyricists gathered together and entertained the audience in the City by the Bay.

*Albert Von Tilzer did his "Take Me Out to the Ball Game."

*L. Wolfe Gilbert performed his anthem, "Waiting for the Robert E. Lee."

*Jerome Kern played his own "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" before guiding Tony Martin for "All the Things You Are."

*Carrie Jacobs Bond went to the piano to accompany singer Alan Linquist as he warbled her "A Perfect Day."

*George M. Cohan offered his "Over There," among other tunes in a medley of his big ones.

*And Irving Berlin wrapped up the festivities with his "God Bless America."

The whole thing was actually a two-part event put on by the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (that's right, good ol' ASCAP). The event's title: "Cavalcade of Music: Those Who Make America's Music." 

In what was billed as "the most notable assemblage of artists and composers ever gathered on one stage," thousands at the California Coliseum heard and saw over forty ASCAP members do their thing. 

During the first half of the event (the afternoon session), the crowd heard American classical music. The evening session- what turned out to be the payoff half- went to this country's contributions to popular music. 

That night, Berlin, Bond, Cohan, Gilbert, Kern, and Von Tilzer were joined by the likes of Harold Arlen, Harry Armstrong, Shelton Brooks, Hoagy Carmichael, Walter Donaldson, W.C. Handy, Billy Hill, Joe Howard, Ralph Rainiger, Sigmund Romberg, and Leo Robin...to say nothing of the team of Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby.  

Back on 7-9-2017, toward the end of the Ragtime to Riches Festival workshop about Bond, the 9-24-1940 festivities got a mention...and the question eventually came up:

"If they were going to put on a concert like this today, with America's greatest living composers, who would show up?" 

Well, first of all, HBO or MTV or Showtime would be most likely to televise the event. (The 1940 soiree wasn't on radio...and we're lucky to have a recording of the whole concert because ASCAP commissioned a San Fran firm, Photo and Sound, Inc., to put the entire shebang on twelve 16" two-sided discs, playable at 33-1/3 RPM at a time when consumers were eight years away from being able to buy records at that speed.) 

Second, the producers would probably have to rent out New York City's Radio City Music Hall, Los Angeles' Dolby Theater, or Cleveland's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame to hold the event. 

Third, you're darn right you'll be able to get on your computer or smartphone or device of some kind and stream the show live.

Of course, it'd be televised live and in prime time. (Bet you they'd need three hours.) 

They'd need three hours- at least that long- for the following tunesmiths:

*Burt Bacharach

*Neil Diamond

*Bob Dylan

*The twosome of Bernard Edwards and Nile Rodgers

*Sheldon Harnick

*Another duo- James "Jimmy Jam" Harris and Terry Lewis

*Jerry Herman

*The team of Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier, and Eddie Holland

*Rupert Holmes

*Billy Joel

*John Kander

*Carole King

*Robert Lopez (of "Frozen" fame)

*The duo of Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil

*Alan Menken

*Lin-Manuel Miranda

*Willie Nelson

*Dolly Parton

*William "Smokey" Robinson

*Steven Schwartz

*Neil Sedaka

*Marc Shaiman (he did the music to Broadway's "Hairspray")

*Paul Simon

*Valerie Simpson

*Stephen Sondheim

*Barrett Strong (Norman Whitfield's old songwriting partner)

*Diane Warren

*Jim Webb

*Frank Wildhorn (helped bring "Victor/Victoria" to Broadway)

*John Williams

*Stevie Wonder 

The bulk of this list was mined from the 2017 World Almanac and Book of Facts. 

With that in mind, who would you add to this list? Which of these songwriters would you like to remove from the list?

What if you wanted to internationalize the list...and bring in living legends like Benny Andersson (of ABBA fame), Paul Anka, Bjork, Eric Clapton, Mick Jagger, Elton John, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Bernie Taupin, Keith Richards, Rod Temperton, and Bjorn Ulvaeus (also of ABBA), just to name a few? 

Could a special featuring America's greatest currently-living composers even hit today's TV screens? 

Let me know what you think. 

I'm Jim Boston...thanks for reading this blog!



 

You Reap What You Sow

After I got home from work last night, I turned on my TV set to watch a rerun of MSNBC's The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell (with Lawrence on vacation, it was actually The Last Word with Ari Melber instead)...and I couldn't believe what I heard.

I saw a clip of (Men's) NBA commissioner Adam Silver addressing his first major crisis since he replaced David Stern this past February:

"Donald Sterling...has been banned...for life."

The Los Angeles Clippers (the team Sterling bought in 1981, when the club still lived in San Diego) will have to find a new owner...as soon as possible.

You know what I say about that?

I say: "RIGHT ON!!!" 

It's more than that hour-long conversation this 80-year-old billionaire had with his 29-year-old girlfriend, V. Stiviano. You know, where the real-estate magnate let the cat out of the bag...and demonstrated that he thought of his West Coast basketball team as a Southern plantation.

Sterling's desire that African Americans stay away from the Staples Center when the Clips are the home team (meaning keeping Basketball Hall of Famer Magic Johnson, among others, out of the building) was the icing on the cake.

Here's the rest of the cake: 

Until just the last couple of seasons, the Clippers had been a laughingstock...courtesy of The West Coast Donald.

Today, the NBA is thirty teams strong. But in time for the 1970-71 season, the team owners okayed a triple expansion- to seventeen squads. (This at a time when we still had the ABA- at that time, a league with eleven clubs, four of which were six years away from joining the NBA in a partial merger.)

In time for that campaign, the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Portland Trail Blazers debuted.

So did the Los Angeles Clippers.

But at first, they lived in Buffalo and were nicknamed the Braves.  

*To make a long story short, the Blazers have made it to the league playoffs 30 times since entering the circuit. Portland became the first of the NBA's 1970-71 newcomers to win it all; under Jack Ramsay (a Basketball Hall of Famer who just passed away recently), the Trail Blazers- led by HOF'er Bill Walton- knocked down a heavily-favored Philadelphia 76ers squad, four games to two, in 1976-77...the year the partial merger took effect.

Rip City got to the league finals in 1989-90 (only to lose to the Detroit Pistons) and 1991-92 (when Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls stopped the Blazers), too.

*The Cavaliers got to the playoffs 18 times in club history...none of them since LeBron James left Cleveland. In fact, the Cavs finally got to the (Men's) NBA championship series in 2006-07...only the San Antonio Spurs- one of those former ABA contingents- proved to be too much for King James and Co. 

*The Clippers are still looking for their first contact with the NBA finals.  

Portland's got four division titles to its credit. Cleveland has topped its division three times.

Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Clippers are two-time division champs.

The 2012-13 and 2013-14 Pacific Division titles are the first ones for this franchise that Donald Sterling purchased 33 years ago. What's more, the Clips' 57-25 mark for this past regular season (one-time Boston Celtics head man Doc Rivers' first as the Clips' head coach) was the best in team history.

But even with Rivers' and predecessor Vinny Del Negro's efforts these last three seasons (and those of players like Chris Paul, Blake Griffin, Jamal Crawford, and J.J. Redick), the team did better in Buffalo (259-397 from 1970-71 to 1977-78). Still, the Clips' two division titles enabled the club's Los Angeles history (915-1,497 since 1984-85, the team's first campaign in Tinseltown) to finally top its San Diego tenure (186-306 from 1978-79 to 1983-84).  

In terms of winning percentage, that means .395 in Buffalo, .378 in Ess Dee, and .379 in El Lay. 

Speaking of Buffalo...Ramsay was the first head coach to guide the franchise to postseason action (1973-74 to 1975-76). The bottom had dropped out for the club by the late 1970s, and its then owner, KFC magnate John Y. Brown, swapped clubs with the then owner of the Celtics, Irv Levin. 

Levin moved the Braves to San Diego in time for the 1978-79 season...the team's first under the Clippers name. 

That first season in California, the team went 43-39...and missed a playoff spot. The team's record got worse and worse with each passing season...until a disastrous 1981-82, when the Clippers limped home 17-65.  

By then, Levin had sold the team to Sterling...who was itching to move the Clippers up Interstate 5.

I wasn't too impressed with Sterling's rationale for bringing his club to America's second largest city: "I always thought there should be a team in the Los Angeles Sports Arena." (The Los Angeles Lakers used the Sports Arena from 1960-61- their first campaign since leaving Minneapolis- to 1966-67. Then they switched to a facility in Englewood, the Staples Center predecessor called the Great Western Forum.) 

While the Lakers became Showtime (thanks to a cast headed up by Johnson and fellow HOF'er Kareem Abdul-Jabbar), the Clippers couldn't draw flies, let alone people. 

The Lakers (under Jerry Buss) became the textbook example of how to run an NBA franchise...and Sterling's questionable decisions (like running the team like a plantation) kept many of the Sports Arena's seats empty. And things stayed the same when both teams moved into the Staples Center at the start of the 1999-2000 campaign. 

It wasn't enough that Sterling's antics killed men's pro basketball in San Diego. 

The wasted draft choices, the questionable choices for head coaches (with a few exceptions- like Larry Brown), other questionable decisions (like the canning of Brown after the 1992-93 season, a rare playoff campaign for the Clippers), and so on and so forth...all of that made Sterling's club the NBA's laughingstock.

It's only since Paul left the Big Easy and came to the Big Orange that the Clippers have been able to fill up Staples...game after game, season after season.

This is the best this once-lowly franchise has been able to do. Ever.

And Donald Sterling's racist rants had put excrement in the punch bowl. 

I'm so glad that Silver and the players in the league got together to throw out that punch bowl and get a new one...as well as a new punch recipe.

If you're going to buy a franchise in one of the most diverse sports leagues in the world, only to treat your team like a plantation, and you have plenty of contempt for not only your players and coaches, but your team's fans as well (and all of this at a time when your team's playing the best ball in the club's history)...you're barking up the wrong tree.

Here's hoping the next owner of the Los Angeles Clippers will be able to help the team get up to the next level...namely, the top of the NBA. 

America's Most Beautiful City

That's where I went last week.

And I found out just how San Diego, CA lives up to its nickname: "America's Most Beautiful City."

Until 3-12-2014, I'd never, ever set foot on America's West Coast before. 

National University's decision to show "The Entertainers" (that 2012 documentary about the World Championship Old-Time Piano Playing Contest and Festival) gave me all the more reason to come out to California.

To get to the Golden State, I caught a pair of Southwest Airlines Boeing 737s (I changed planes in Denver, CO).

On the way out to San Diego, I was nervous. After all, this was just the fifth flight I'd ever taken in my life. (My other plane trips happened in 1967, 1981, 2002, and 2012.) 

And this 2014 flight was the first plane excursion that didn't involve work or going to see relatives. 

Once I saw Michael Zimmer (one of the documentary's codirectors) at the San Diego International Airport, I started to finally relax.

I knew everything was going to be all right.

Michael rented a Chrysler 200 sedan and drove us out to our hotel, Courtyard (by Marriott) San Diego Central (8651 Spectrum Center Dr., 92123). 

Great place to stay! 

Not only did National pay for our hotel rooms and fly us out to America's most heavily-populated state...the school (Michael teaches a screenwriting class at National's Los Angeles campus) wined and dined us.

Matter of fact, a few hours after I had a chance to kick back in my room, we ate dinner at a restaurant on Park Blvd. [I've been racking my brains trying to remember the eatery's name. All I know is that its name has "Bellezza" in it...and that its menu features pizzas with people's first names as the pizzas' monikers (handles such as "Julieta").] 

And we- Michael, girlfriend Tiara, his parents (Michael Sr. and Margaret), "Perfessor" Bill Edwards, and I- really loved that restaurant.  

The pizzas themselves are fired up in a brick oven- the same way they were made when pizza came over to the United States around and after World War 1. 

Speaking of fired up...I was really fired up about the next day, one that would culminate in the actual showing of "The Entertainers." 

And after we ate breakfast at the hotel's restaurant, we went sightseeing...and we focused on Balboa Park.

Balboa Park, all by itself, makes Ess Dee earn the "America's Most Beautiful City" nickname. Lots of gardens (including a striking Japanese one)...lots of museums...and the Spreckels Organ Pavilion, home of America's largest outdoor pipe organ. 

The 1915 installation (built by the Austin Organ Co.) used to be the world's largest...until one of the cities in Austria put up an outdoor pipe organ that passed up the San Diego one. (But now, the Spreckels Organ Society and San Diego's government leaders are out to give the lead back to the instrument that currently boasts 4,518 pipes with 73 ranks...with four manuals to control it all.) 

We split the pre-movie sightseeing in half...and in the second half, Faye Ballard joined us. (A blizzard messed things up in the Chicago area, forcing flights out of O'Hare International Airport to get canceled...meaning Faye couldn't get a plane from Champaign, IL to Chi-Town that Wednesday. So she got a plane from Champaign to Dallas-Fort Worth, then changed planes in the Metroplex and came out to San Diego.)

Meanwhile, Four Arrows was in San Diego...at a teaching seminar across town.

Before we were all given the chance to get inside the Spreckels Organ Pavilion, the entourage splintered...and Faye and I got a chance to tour Balboa Park's Museum of Photographic Arts (the very venue where "The Entertainers" would be screened that night). 

That week, MOPA exhibited a mind-blowing display of photos depicting political leaders in action, acts of civil disobedience, and virtually anything else that could've been ripped out of your local newspaper (or at least out of the Associated Press files). 

Then, after touring Spreckels, we all made it inside MOPA, whose 200-seat auditorium was set up to show that documentary about the World Championship Old-Time Piano Playing Contest and Festival.

At that time, Four Arrows (an online college professor when he's not playing old-time piano) was en route from the seminar across town.

It was 7:00 PM (Pacific time)...and just as the film started rolling, Bill, Faye, Tiara, Margaret, the two Michaels, and I went out to eat (Bill: "We've all seen the movie before!").

So we ate at a restaurant in the middle of the park, The Prado. 

Even if Omaha's got more eateries per capita than any other city in America, that's no reason to put San Diego's cuisine down. When it comes to restaurants, SD gives the Big O a run for its money...and The Prado is one of the many proofs.

At The Prado, they serve a half chicken as an entree...and that chicken rocked! 

As things turned out, the 140 people who came to see "The Entertainers" found out the movie rocked, too. 

They loved Bill, Faye, Four Arrows, Michael the Younger, and me. The Q-and-A session was a blast...and so was the concert Four Arrows, Faye, Bill, and I launched into after the Q-and-A.

Had a great time in San Diego...and if things turn out, I'm going back there as soon as possible.

America's Favorite...and Second to None

That slogan was taken from a piece of sheet music written by Charles N. Daniels, one of the most prolific composers of the 1890s-1930s period, with songs like "Margery," "You Tell Me Your Dream, I'll Tell You Mine," and "Chloe." (That last one was one of the many he composed under one of his many pen names: Neil Moret.)

And don't forget that he published an 1899 Scott Joplin piece, "Original Rags."

The above slogan's also one that Charles' grandniece, Nan Bostick, adopted.

Nan was no slouch as a composer, either, what with winners like "Ragtime in Randall," "Bean Whistle Rag," and "That Missing You Rag."

I'm one of the many missing her, too. Recently, Nan lost her battle with lung cancer.

Nan was a veteran of many ragtime festivals nationwide, including California's Sutter Creek event (held every August since that get-together's 2000 inception) and that same state's West Coast Ragtime Festival.

She even performed at the Ragtime to Riches Festival, coming to the Omaha/Council Bluffs/Bellevue area in 2006 and 2007. (I remember when, at the 2006 festival, she jammed alongside another of that year's featured performers, Pat Boilesen.)

Nan Bostick really was second to none when it came to giving workshops; hers were some of the most entertaining workshops you'd ever attended.

One of her most famous workshops focused on the work her granduncle put together, starting in his Missouri/Kansas days...when Charles' "Hiawatha" touched off a brief craze for songs about Native American people.

Funny thing about it, "Hiawatha" wasn't about a Native American...it was about a Kansas town that bears said name.

I learned from Nan that during the 1897-1917 period, roughly 350 women composed at least one ragtime tune apiece.

And Charles N. Daniels got some of them published, too.

I've tried some of those pieces myself...and had a ball working on 'em. One of those numbers is "That Poker Rag," by Charlotte Blake. Others include Irene Giblin's "Chicken Chowder" and Nellie Stokes' "Snowball."

By the way...my favorite Nan Bostick composition is "Bean Whistle Rag." (You get to, as the sheet music says, ad lib...and have fun!)

She encouraged me to concentrate on giving workshops; Nan, somehow, liked the ones I'd given. (Well, to tell you the truth, I'd rather put giving workshops and performing together. But still...)

Nan was one of ragtime's best and most tireless researchers; it showed in every concert she gave and every workshop she conducted. I admire how she liked going to different schools nationwide to show children just what old-time piano's really like.

Nan...thank you for helping to show me (and plenty of other people) what old-time piano's really like.

Thank you for being part of my life...and allowing me to be in yours.

A Renaissance Woman

That's exactly what Burns Davis was.

Was rather than is.

The Monday before last month's Great Plains Ragtime Society meeting (held 9-25-2011), I'd sent the massage therapist from Lincoln, NE a copy of a flyer touting that September meeting. And it was all about trying to get more Lincolnites interested in traveling those 52 miles to Omaha to check out what GPRS has been doing to help promote old-time piano.

I was eleven days too late.

I received an email from Nan Bostick; she'd written to find out if I'd heard about what happened to Burns.

Opened up the link Nan sent with that email and found out...the unthinkable happened.

Burns Smith Davis passed away on 9-8-2011.

It happened- unexpectedly- at home. (She would've turned 64 on 11-13-2011.)

I found out that Burns wasn't actually her birth name. She was born Bonnie Jill Reimer...and the birth took place in Enid, OK. (The proud parents were Barney J. and Martha Louise Smith Reimer.) Burns went on to take her first and last names from a couple of highly influential piano teachers of hers.

In 1968, Burns received a Bachelor of Music degree from the University of Oklahoma...where she went on to, in 1972, earn a master's degree in literary science.

In previous posts, I'd called Burns a Californian-turned-Nebraskan. Actually, she was an Oklahoman-turned-Arkansan-turned-Washingtonian-turned-Californian-turned-Nebraskan. (Fresh out of college, BSD held down library jobs in Fayetteville, AR; Yakima, WA; and Red Bluff, CA. In Yakima, Burns went back to college...and got another master's degree, this time in botany.)

Burns Davis moved from Red Bluff to another California city, Cupertino, where she became a nursing home administrator.

In addition, she became a ragtime enthusiast there...to the point where she became active with a rag group and a local festival.

Her next city was Los Gatos, CA...where she got involved in business consulting and design.

And then, in the middle 1990s, Burns came to Nebraska's capital city; in Lincoln, she joined the State Library Commission. On top of that, she launched Davis Business Systems.

The Star City was the place in which Burns' life reached a real turning point.

In 1998, Burns decided to become a massage therapist...so, she enrolled at the city's Myotherapy Institute.

And that's where people found out that she had The Knack.

Not long after studying at the institute, BSD started her own massage therapy business, Ehaweh Arts. (The firm's name came from one of Burns' great-grandmothers, an Oklahoman known for her own ability to heal.)

Meanwhile, Burns began to land jobs as a substitute organist at a succession of Lincoln churches: St. Mark's Episcopal, St. David's Episcopal, St. Paul's United Methodist, St. Paul's Congregational, and Trinity United Methodist. (At Trinity, Burns served a while as its main organist.)

She even went back to Enid to attend Phillips University...and to intern on the organ at that city's Central Christian Church. The high point was a concert in June 2000.

Five years and one month later, I met Burns Davis for the first time.

And it wouldn't have been possible if it weren't for Gil Lieberknecht.

Gil gave me a list of performers he'd been playing alongside at different ragtime get-togethers nationwide (especially the Sutter Creek outing in his- and Nan's- native California). The list came in handy, because I was trying to find performers for the first annual Ragtime to Riches Festival, then held at a church in Council Bluffs, Broadway United Methodist.

Jim Radloff was on that list, too...and he and Burns answered the call. (So did two other performers I'd competed alongside at the World Championship Old-Time Piano Playing Contest: Marty Mincer and "Perfessor" Bill Edwards.)

Burns went on to play every last one of the R to R Festivals we've had thus far, from the first (where Gil was the guest of honor) to this year's event (the first held at Omaha's First Central Congregational Church).

She ended up doing the last Sunday concert at every R to R only because her Ehaweh Arts schedule and her work as a church organist in the Star City combined to leave her with the last Sunday concert...but last year and this, Burns got R to R Sunday (at least the afternoon part) off.

In fact, at the 2010 festival, Burns gave a workshop about Gil, the highly-prolific ragtime composer who moved, as a teen, to Nebraska in 1947 (his dad Henry was born here) and died in 2008 at age 76. 

And it was one heck of a workshop! (In fact, Burns' tribute to her old buddy- of "Goldenrod Rag" fame- was the workshop I could only hope to do about the man nicknamed "Gil Lieby.")

Burns' 2010 R to R workshop had the same thing her festival concerts had: A kind of quiet elegance that featured Burns' wit (who else would list CDs as some of her musical instruments?) and great analytical intelligence.

By the way, she was no slouch as a singer. In fact, one of her Ragtime to Riches concerts began with BSD singing and playing "Everybody Rag with Me." (Earlier this year, Burns- a new convert to Judaism- became a cantorial soloist. All of that after membership in the St. Mark's Episcopal choir.)

Massage therapist...librarian...business consultant...instrumentalist...singer...animal lover...ragtime enthusiast...Burns Smith Davis was no slouch as a person.

Burns, I'm glad to have met you.