Arts & Society

Mary Bird • February 28, 2013

Love was definitely in the air as the Washington Ballet chose Valentine’s Day to present associate artistic director David Palmer’s world premiere of “Dangerous Liaisons.” The program also included the company premiere of ballet master Elaine Kudo’s “Opposites Distract” and a second world premiere, Amy Seiwert’s “Under Covers.” The titles and costumes (some rather brief) conveyed the emotions. The audience at Sidney Harman Hall seemed inspired as couples hurried home. [gallery ids="119640,119681,119674,119648,119656,119668,119663" nav="thumbs"]

Georgetowner • February 27, 2013

The Women?s Board of the American Heart Association Greater Washington Region held its
65th Annual An Affair of the Heart luncheon at the Marriot Wardman Park Hotel Feb. 11. The capacity crowd was again reminded that ?heart disease kills more women than all forms of cancer combined.? Kathleen Matthews officiated as mistress of ceremonies. Guests watched a video produced by Go Red for Women before enjoying a fashion show of Max Mara designs introduced by Susan Cannaday of Bloomingdale?s Chevy Chase. Grants were awarded and special prizes drawn.

Gary Tischler • February 22, 2013

You’ve heard the sayings, usually by someone older with a functioning memory, a plaintive statement about the passing of time and people, ways of doing things, values, genres and items that have been thrown into the dustbin of history.

Such as: “They don’t make ’em like that anymore,” “Things (movies, music, kids, politics, hair styles, chicken soup) aren’t what they used to be,” or the bleak exclamation point sentence, “I didn’t know he or she was still alive!”

Lately, I find myself being one of those persons, saying things like that.

So, here goes again. Pop music isn’t what it used to be. And they don’t make westerns the way they used to. In fact, they hardly make them at all.

Patti Page and Harry Carey, Jr. I didn’t realize that they were still alive, until they passed away a week ago.

I mention Page and Carey because they were examplars and professionals in forms of of popular entertainment which have all but disappeared.

Page, who died at the age of 85 on New Year’s Day, was a star and a bit of a legend in the field of what is best described as adult pop vocal music—not quite in the lofty range of, say, a Frank Sinatra or Doris Day—which dominated the music charts in the late 1940s and right up until the mid-1950s when Bill Haley rocked around the clock like a John the Baptist of rock-and-roll until the King himself arrived soon thereafter in his blue suede shoes, loving you tender.

Before rock seriously put a dent into the popularity of crooners like Eddie Fisher and Vic Damone and even songstresses like the hugely popular Doris Day, Page hit the top or near the top of the charts regularly like a gong, marrying a tad touch of country to songs like “Tennessee Waltz” (a number-one hit in 1950) and the super-hit novelty song, “How Much is That Doggie in the Window?”—plus a series of haunting and hugely popular ballads.

Although Page’s hit-making power faded with the onset of rock-and-roll and the rowdy 1960s, she continued to record and perform, in Branson, Mo., which is ubiquitous with singers wearing the mantle of legend.)

You suspect that there was something mysterious about Page, who never looked like she trained in the Mickey Mouse Club , but sprang, full-blown, into the public eye as a woman, not a girl. And a very attractive woman at that, reddish curled hair and fashionable 1950s clothing. She looked a little like the glamorous sister of the Beaver’s mom.

There were singers like that during this early “Mad Men” period. They provided songs for “Your Hit Parade,” the popular Saturday night show in which two men and two women sang the top hits of the day, generated by the likes of Page, Day, Jo Stafford and Perry Como and others.

“Your Hit Parade” died of cardiac arrest brought on by rock-and-roll—not many of the “Parade” performers were adept at handling a tune like “Jailhouse Rock.” Only Pat Boone—a crooner-turned-wholesome rocker managed to adapt to the new environment, although he would never threatened the tempo of either Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis or Chuck Berry.

Page soldiered on, turning out records, touring and singing her own brand of country-tinged balladry right into the 21st century until her retirement several years ago. So prodigious—and high quality—was her output that she was due to receive the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. She sold more than 100 million records.

In 1978, a singer named Sharon McKnight wrote and recorded a song called “Put Another Nickel in the Jukebox and Bring Back Patti Page.” Jukeboxes, it should be noted, are not much, if at all, being made anymore either.

Something else—beside the songs of Patti Page—was hugely popular in the 1950s, although also beginning to lose its traction and hold on the popular American imagination. That would be westerns—a genre of movies that began when movies began, and in the 1950s, was at its peak, with a slew of B movies, top-notch and big-budget Hollywood films, and television series for both adults (“Gunsmoke”) and young cowpokes (“Range Rider” and “Hopalong Cassidy”). John Wayne was the biggest western star in Hollywood (and maybe the biggest star, period), and John Ford was the pre-eminent director of western movies like “The Searchers,” “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” and “She Wore a Yellow Ribbon,” the middle part of his 7th Cavalry trilogy. Part of the Wayne and Ford group was actor Harry Carey, Jr.

Carey was in many of Ford’s and Wayne’s movies, not as a star but a supporting player—his blondish, curly hair early later turned into something more frontier-like. He was a member in good standing of a group of people known informally as the John Ford Stock Company, a group that included Wayne, Victor McLaglen, Ward Bond and Maureen O’Hara, who still survives. Ford, as Carey duly noted in his book, “Company of Heroes: My Life as an Actor in the John Ford Stock Company,” could be both loyal friend and horrible, cruel task master. No one—not even Wayne—escaped Ford’s ire.

Most memorably, perhaps, Carey was the blond second lieutenant who vied for the affections of a very young Joanne Dru with John Agar in “She Wore a Yellow Ribbon,” Ford’s most elegiac western about the 7th Cavalry—populated almost entirely, it seemed, by Irishmen, as fine a piece of work by an American as exists in Hollywood film archives.

Carey, who died on Dec. 27 at the age of 91, appeared in more than 90 films. Like his father, who was featured prominently and often in westerns in silent movies and then talkies, often under the direction of Ford, Carey was a fixture on the honored roll call of character actors. He worked with Wayne, or “The Duke” 11 times, and in many of Ford’s films, including the last western made by Ford, “Cheyenne Autumn.”

Carey also appeared on numerous television western series, including “Wagon Train,” “Bonanza” and “Gunsmoke,” and for his television contributions he was honored with a Hollywood Walk of Fame star and was inducted in the Western Performers Hall of Fame at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, Okla. He was married to Marilyn Fix, the daughter of another great Hollywood character actor Paul Fix.

When you think of Carey and “Yellow Ribbon,” you can hear the officers of the 7th Cavalry, wearing yellow kerchiefs, dusty cap and sabers, riding to Monument Valley, Ford’s favorite filming site.

And let’s not forget: They don’t make them like that anymore.

Gary Tischler •

Some things you should know about “The Motherfcker With the Hat,” a scabrous, oddly lyrical, mightily profane play by the gifted newish playwright Stephen Adly Guirgis, which is now receiving a riveting, compulsively engaging production at Studio Theatre under the direction of Serge Seiden.

The “mother” word in the title—and in the program and posters and in many publications but not in the Georgetowner (and not the Washington Post either) — is heard many times along with pretty much all the words in the lexicon of four-letter and more words bound to tick off people who are offended at their appearance. I would add that even if you are likely to be offended, come ahead anyway. Attending this production is a brazen chance to feel many acts of recognition (and contrition): to cringe and laugh because you laughed, to see men and women (and, of course, that sneaky apparition, thine own self) at their addictive, profane, wounding, can’t help f—–g up, fit-to-bust into tears or fist pounding, nakedness including one instance of literal male full-frontalness.

When “The MF With the Hat” play hit Broadway in 2011, it got Tony nominations, if not big audiences despite the presence of Chris Rock. Didn’t see it, but I liked this one very much — not because it’s necessarily a great work of art, but because the characters engage you so much. On the surface, you can just sort of gape at and enjoy a guy like Jackie, fresh out of prison, wanting to move on up and in with his girlfriend, Veronica, a powerfully passionate and foul-mouthed girl with a habit, or Ralph D, Jackie’s cool customer AA sponsor, who games the wellness and consciousness raising world like some well-meaning huckster who believes his own jive, or Victoria, Ralph’s embittered, hungry wife — and not to forget Cousin Julio, who’s got Jackie’s back while periodically giving hints of being a very bad dude, even when’s he’s cooking up organic breakfasts in a colorful apron.

Guirgis’s gift is to paint that world fully and to place his characters in their proper environment. These persons are all about some sort of addiction or another: they behave badly all the time, they screw up, they lie, they cheat (on each other), they can’t handle the fact that they’re unfocused, disaster areas bound to pounce on a minefield as if it’s clear sailing. But, boy, are they out there, and because every third word begins with an “f” or “mother” or some variation thereof, they seem almost to be poetic.

Jackie just wants a life: he’s got a job, he’s going to celebrate a birthday, he wants to take his girl to the pie place, and, whoops, he sees a man’s hat lying on the floor, a hat not his own, jaunty. He jumps on the bed like a beagle and accuses, “. . . smells like Aqua Velva and dick.” Veronica denies it, and she’s good at it , because she wears tough ‘tude like a prom dress. “I’d kick a three-legged cat down the stairs before I say I f—–g love you,” she contends.

Jackie runs to Ralph D, who looks like Kris Kristofferson on the make, smooth-bearded, white dude, but his wife’s got him nailed when he asks her to mix a smoothie for his pal. “Go f— yourself,” she says, and there’s a reason. There are, after all, only two candidates as to who owns the hat, and one of them is gay.

Jackie’s got no clue: he’s torched and scorched repeatedly, partly cause he’s got a code, which he sticks to except when he’s not cheating on Veronica, or leaving a pal in the lurch, or guzzling up booze. He knows his predicament. He can’t handle the world, he wants stuff and things and love, but he hasn’t got the skills. Still, Drew Cortese gives him an odd mix of potential violence, razor-like, and pouting tenderness, which is no match for Quentin Mare’s Ralph D who could self-justify with the gifts of a reasonably raging prophet. Gabriela Fernandez-Coffey is sexy and seething as Ralph’s wife. All she’s got are her looks and smarts, which she uses exactly when they’re not wanted.

Rosal Colon’s Veronica is so gut-wrenching and real. She’s no prom queen, and there are the lines of coke. But there’s something about her—her way with gritty words, the way she keeps her body in check, her sheer fierceness. It makes you wish she were off the white lines and into love.

And then there’s Liche Ariza as Cousin Julio who has a kind heart, a sense of obligation, a spirited smartness no more than when he wants to present himself as a kind of sly killer.

In this play, if they were all on the stage but in total darkness, at the same time, knowing the lines, the steps and moves, they’d draw blood, there’s be wreckage from body contact, sex and violence. Luckily, they keep the lights on, but, in the end, we recognize, and secretly empathize. You don’t have to be a Nuyorican to recognize all the times when you just couldn’t help yourself.

Sonya Bernhardt • February 20, 2013

The 15th Annual St. Jude’s Gourmet Gala: “Mardi Gras for the Kids” took place Feb. 12 at the National Building Museum. The event raises funds for children suffering from catastrophic and life-threatening diseases. The gala featured chefs from local restaurants and live and silent auctions. The Gourmet Gala is organized by a committee that has helped raise more than $3 million for St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital and has helped support various programs including gene therapy, bone marrow transplants, immunology and AIDS vaccine research. [gallery ids="102584,119732,119702,119710,119717,119725,119736,119747,119742" nav="thumbs"]

Mary Bird •

The Council on Women’s Leadership, founded in 2010 at Meridian International Center, develops and raises awareness of opportunities to accelerate women’s leadership, empowerment and entrepreneurship worldwide. The council’s goal of fostering meaningful connections and collaborations could not have been better served than by Bulgarian Ambassador Elena Poptodorova, who hosted a tea at her residence on Feb. 7. A former Member of Parliament, the ambassador spoke proudly of her country’s entry into NATO and the European Union. She said, “I love reaching out to real Washington,” which explains her heartfelt remarks about U.S.-Bulgarian diplomacy as she discussed her nation’s march to democracy. [gallery ids="102585,119699,119685,119705,119694" nav="thumbs"]

Gary Tischler • February 19, 2013

For me, it’s hard to interview John Eaton. You get to talking.

Eaton, who has appeared at the Barns at Wolf Trap for years bringing his special brand of talk-chat, keyboard playing and bottomless knowledge, has a singular passion. He loves the music of what’s loosely known as “The Great American Songbook”: the great American composers, the great lyricists, the Gershwins, the Porters, the Rodgers, the Harts, the Parrishes, the Cahns, the Hammersteins, the Arlens, the Weills, the men, for the most part, who wrote uniquely American music that was also the country’s most enduringly popular music in a parade of unforgettable works and songs.

You get to talking. As you go along, Eaton, who is anything but an academic, works at it. For him, all that music which he has played for 50 years now in one setting another, from hotels to clubs, to jazz joints and juke joints, to the White House, for the Smithsonian, and touring all over the country is as alive as the latest rap lyric—and with a richer pedigree.

He’ll be doing two appearances at the Barns—on Saturday, Feb. 16, with “A Salute to the One-Hit Wonders of American Popular Music” and on Saturday, March 30, joined by bassist Tommy Cecil in “A Juke Joint Jam Session.”

The one-hit wonders are probably not going to be the kind of rock and or country songs done by people who hit and achieve their 15 minutes of musical fame like “The Banana Boat Song,” the very good “Since I Met You Baby” or “Harper Valley PTA.” What you’ll get will be the classic “As Time Goes By,” written by a fellow by the name of Herman Hupfeld, a song that eventually ended up being done by Dooley Wilson in the film “Casablanca”—with a melancholy Humphrey Bogart urging him on with “You can play it for her. You can play it for me” along with songs like “Willow Weep For Me” and others.

“These are songs that became classics, they’re part of the Great American Songbook, ranging through the early 1960s,” Eaton said. “It’s the authors who are unfamiliar to the general but the song—we can all sing them, or at least several generations of people can.” If you look it up, you see strange names with great songs: Ann Ronell, who wrote “ Willow Weep for Me,” or Irene Higgenbottom, who wrote the Billie Holiday classic “Good Morning Heartbreak.”

Eaton—now 78 years old and still playing regularly and no doubt will do so sitting down or standing up forever—has the two Barns concerts as well as a four-part seminar, “A Salute to Great American Song Writers” that features the music and discussions about Irving Berlin, Franke Loesser, Vernon Duke, Kurt Weill and George Gershwin on Feb. 26, March 5, March 12 and March 19 at the Smithsonian Institution, where he has conducted series on the songbook for years.

As a Washington native, Yale graduate and member of the literary society St. Anthony Hall, Eaton talks about music with passion and humor. He is unassuming with a Garrison Keller kind of drollness. But get him to talking about the value of the music, and you’re on a roll. “Part of the problem sometimes becomes that this music—the Gershwin music, the Ellington music, the Rodgers and Hammerstein and Cole Porter music—was every bit as much a part of the popular scene as rock and all of its relatives are now. That music came from jazz and the blues, and made its way into all parts of society.” The songbook was the stuff of MGM and other musicals, such as “Oklahama!” and “Anything Goes” of Broadway, the Vaudeville circuits and New York concert halls.

Among these scenes—the hotel bars of swells, the jazz joints and clubs—were places Eaton grew to know well. “Once I started playing the piano, that was it for me,” he said. “I knew who I was, what I was going to do with my life.” He played for the Reagans at the White House, he has played at Blues Alley and at the Bayou before it became a legendary rock venue.

He played with such legendary jazz folks as Zoot Sims, Benny Carter and Clark Terry. “We always think of classical music—the European variety of Mozart and Beethoven and so on as a high art form. But this—Gershwin and Ellington, especially, and all the rest of them, too—they are America’s classical composers. You could say that easily, as in “Rhapsody in Blue” or “An American In Paris” or in Ellington’s work. But if you take the songbook as a whole, all that music, you have essentially homegrown, American music—made in America. And that’s what I do—to me it’s now, and yesterday, but it’s as fresh and great as any music every written.”

Never having had the pleasure of being in the presence of an Eaton performance, I did have the pleasure of an Eaton conversation. When he talks about the songs, the music and the songbook, there’s a lot of love coming out. We tell our stories to each other: for me being at the Metropole on Times Square in New York, hearing Lionel Hampton and jazz for the first time; for him, all the notes on the keyboard, resurrecting songs.

“You know, when the music revolution really hit in the 1960s, some of us, like me, didn’t know what to do, we thought it was over, rock and roll, the British invasion, the Beatles and Dylan,” he said. “But that hasn’t been the case. Today, I notice something—now the audiences are diverse, young, older and old, men and women, black and white. The music is a part of our lives today.”

In no small part, that’s thanks to a guy named John Eaton, story teller, piano man, talker and player.

John Eaton, the Barns at Wolf Trap: Saturday, Feb. 16, 7:30 p.m., “A Salute to the One-Hit Wonders of American Popular Music”; Saturday, March 30, 7:30 p.m., “A Juke Joint Jam Session”— www.WolfTrap.org.

Nico Dodd • February 18, 2013

“The Bayou, D.C.’s Killer Joint” premiered Jan. 31 at the AMC Loews Georgetown, only yards from where the legendary music joint stood for decades.
The new documentary chronicles the story of the Bayou, the jazz venue turned rock-and-roll bar on K Street near Wisconsin Avenue. A labor of love, the project is produced by Metro Teleproductions and Dave Lilling, Bill Scanlan, Vinnie Perrone and Dave Nuttycombe.

To celebrate the film’s completion, a reception was held before the Jan. 31 premiere at Georgetown’s AMC Loews, the complex which covers the Bayou location. The event was catered by Wingo’s and Potomac Wine & Liquor.

The venue’s intimate atmosphere and big name acts were a big draw for concertgoers. The Bayou’s legal capacity was 500 persons. In comparison, 9:30 Club’s capacity is 1,200 persons.

“When they were getting ready to get on stage, you were breathing down their necks,” said Charlie Clark, who grew up in Arlington with the Tramonte brothers, whose family owned the Bayou from 1953 to 1980.

The Bayou is famous for hosting some of the biggest acts in rock-and-roll from the 1960s until it closed New Year’s Eve 1998 (Jan. 1, 1999). Foreigner’s club debut was there, as well as U2’s second concert in America. U2 was the opening act for D.C.-based punk group, the Slickee Boys. Mark Noone, lead singer of the Slickee Boys, was at the reception. “They were nice Irish guys,” Noone said. “I had trouble understanding them.”
The documentary took 14 years to finish. According to producer Vinny Perrone, it was “in many respects, a tortured undertaking. It almost didn’t make it,” he said.

Initially, the filmmakers filmed approximately 100 interviews. They did not want to release the film until they got interviews with famous musicians who performed there like Billy Joel, Bruce Springsteen and U2. Those interviews were able to be secured, but other interviews with former owners, managers and other performers create an in-depth portrait of the place.

The film will be showing on Maryland Public Television Monday, Feb. 25, at 9 p.m.

Although the film has been finished, the filmmakers are still about $30,000 in debt from making the film, a non-profit project. On Feb. 17, the Hamilton is hosting The Bayou Presents “Last Call” a benefit concert featuring a long list of musicians who played there.

Visit the film’s website for more information.
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