Topical Guide 247
Mark Dorset
Art: Erotic Potential of
While he thought about the new girl, he sketched her, on a sheet of the drawing paper that he kept handy on his desk, at his right hand, for recording ideas for new jewelry whenever they came to him. He recorded the girl not as he saw her in the workroom, but as he hoped soon to see her, in his bedroom. When he studied the sketches he had made, he discovered a curious thing: his sketches of her aroused him, whetted his appetite for her, better than imagination alone had, and far better than actually observing the girl had. In the sketches, he had given her a mix of coyness, shyness, fear, and lasciviousness that he sought in all the girls he pursued but that none ever quite provided.
Herb ’n’ Lorna, Chapter 2
Work: Job Titles
There was a knock on the glass of his office door. Luther looked up, waved his “typewriter” in, and slipped the page of sketches into the drawer in which he habitually put the sketches he made for new jewelry ideas. … That page went, in a stack of other pages of sketches, to the man who conducted “outlet studies” for Cole & Lord’s, work that today would be called market research. … “Finding outlets will be difficult. None of the stores that currently sell our links and studs, to extrapolate from the inquiries I have made, will carry them. This need not be an insuperable difficulty, however. Might not drummers sell them directly to the customer?”
Herb ’n’ Lorna, Chapter 2
typewriter: See definition 2.
drummer: See definition 2.
Opportunities Missed
An astute reader has pointed out that in Topical Guide 240 I missed an opportunity to include Fletcher Henderson’s “What-Cha-Call-’Em Blues.” Shame on me!
Here it is, along with lots of photographs of Josephine Baker.
Personnel:
Fletcher Henderson, piano
Elmer Chambers, Joe Smith, trumpets
Louis Armstrong, cornet
Charlie Green, trombone
Buster Bailey, clarinet, alto saxophone
Don Redman, alto saxophone, tenor saxophone
Coleman Hawkins, tenor saxophone, clarinet
Charlie Dixon, banjo
Bob Escudero, bass
Kaiser Marshall, drums
What a band!
Recorded in New York City, May 29, 1925.
Watching on the treadmill: The Girls in the Band.
From Kanopy:
The award-winning documentary film THE GIRLS IN THE BAND tells the poignant, untold stories of female jazz and big band instrumentalists and their fascinating, history-making journeys from the late 30s to the present day. The many first-hand accounts of the challenges faced by these talented women provide a glimpse into decades of racism and sexism that have existed in America. They wiggled, they jiggled, they wore low cut gowns and short shorts, they kowtowed to the club owners and smiled at the customers … and they did it all just to play the music they loved. In the thirties and forties, hundreds of women musicians toured the country in glamorous All-Girl Bands, while others played side by side with their male counterparts. Yet, by the mid-fifties, female jazz musicians had literally disappeared from the workplace, their names and their contributions to music completely forgotten. Today, there is a new breed of gifted young women taking their rightful place in the world of jazz, which can no longer deny their talents.
[more to come on Thursday, April 28, 2022]
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