Month: April 2020

The Funniest People in Music, Volume 2: Buy in Other Formats, Including PDF

David Bruce: The Funniest People in Music, Volume 2 — Illnesses and Injuries, Improvising

Illnesses and Injuries

• Joey Ramone, lead singer of the Ramones, suffered from obsessive-compulsive disorder, making him do repetitive and unnecessary actions. Before leaving an elevator, he would sometimes get in and get out of it 10 times before finally exiting for good. In Spain, he once got off the curb, then on again, so many times that a driver who was waiting for him to cross the street finally drove by him, clipping him slightly. On one tour, the Ramones flew to England, and after they landed in London, Joey said that he needed to go back to his apartment in New York so he could exit through his door one more time. (He wasn’t able to do it, of course — he had to stay on tour.) Suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorder did have one benefit. His friend Joan Tarshis would visit him, and he would hug her before she left. However, he would have to hug her more than once before his obsessive-compulsive disorder would allow him to let her leave. Ms. Tarshis says, “I’d be halfway down the hall, and he’d call me over and I’d go back for another hug. This’d go on three or four more times, every time.”

• After a skiing accident, cellist Pablo Casals called a press conference to announce that he had broken his arm and therefore would be forced to cancel several concerts. The reporters were surprised to see Mr. Casals in a good mood and asked why he was so happy instead of being upset by his accident. Mr. Casals explained, “Because now I don’t have to practice.” (Chances are excellent that this anecdote is apocryphal.)

• Nineteenth-century pianist Louis Moreau Gottschalk had a bad habit of biting his nails until he almost had no nails. In fact, a friend of his, fellow pianist Richard Hoffman, remembers looking at the piano keyboard after Mr. Gottschalk had played and seeing that the keys were covered with blood.

Improvising

• Jazz musicians strive for perfection in their improvising; in fact, this striving is what Oscar Peterson calls the “will to perfection,” which he explains by saying that “it requires you to collect all your senses, emotions, physical strength, and mental power, and focus them entirely onto the performance, with utter dedication, every time you play. And if that is scary, it is also uniquely exciting … you never get rid of it. Nor do you want to, for you come to believe that if you get it all right, you will be capable of virtually anything.” As important as perfection is, however, one thing is more important than perfection: the striving toward perfection. Coleman Hawkins recorded a brilliant solo in the Freedom Now Suite, but as brilliant as the solo was, a squeak appeared in it. The squeak could easily have been edited out for the album, but Mr. Hawkins insisted, “Don’t splice that! When it’s all perfect in a piece like this, there’s something very wrong.”

• While Patricia McBride and Edward Villella were dancing the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet to Prokofiev’s music as performed by the Pittsburgh Symphony, the conductor set the tempo way too slow, forcing Ms. McBride and Mr. Villella to dance ahead of the music and to finish dancing before the music stopped. What to do? Ms. McBride started to bourrée off stage on pointe, but Mr. Villella grabbed her wrist and pleaded, “Patty, just stay with me.” The two then improvised — well — a few minutes of dance.

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The Funniest People in Music, Volume 2: Buy the Paperback

The Funniest People in Music, Volume 2: Buy in Other Formats, Including PDF

David Bruce: The Funniest People in Music, Volume 2 — Good Deeds, Husbands and Wives

Good Deeds

• When Emma Calvé first traveled to Paris to get singing lessons in preparation for an operatic career, she sat by an attentive elderly gentleman on top of a stagecoach. Unfortunately, the elderly gentleman was a little too attentive, for when she fell asleep, he put his arm around her waist. This awakened Ms. Calvé, who slapped the elderly gentleman with such force that everyone in the stagecoach realized what had happened. The stagecoach stopped, voices were raised in discussion and argument, and a young man gave Ms. Calvé his seat inside the stagecoach and took her seat by the elderly gentleman on top of the stagecoach.

• In Nashville, Tennessee, a group of musicians was playing at the airport. They were playing Johnny Cash’s “Walk the Line” when Mr. Cash, carrying a garment bag, walked into the airport. Of course, Mr. Cash recognized the song and the musicians recognized Mr. Cash, who walked up to the microphone, and joined in on the singing of the last part of the song. The audience of about six people gave an enthusiastic ovation, and Mr. Cash smiled, then picked up his garment bag and headed toward the security check-in.

• When Marian Anderson was young, she showed great talent as a singer, but of course she needed special training to develop her talent. Her church raised money so she could be trained for a year by famous voice coach Giuseppe Boghetti. He was so impressed by her talent that he coached her a second year for free. Ms. Anderson became a world-famous singer and the first African American to sing at the Metropolitan Opera.

• Paul Robeson was a kind man. When Yousuf Karsh, the famed photographer, took his portrait, Mr. Robeson sang some spirituals for him. Mr. Karsh was so impressed by their beauty that he said that he would like for his wife to hear them. Mr. Robeson called her and sang for her over the telephone.

Husbands and Wives

• Luciano Pavarotti was amazed that Joan Sutherland could sing Amina at full voice during a dress rehearsal in the afternoon, then sing Violetta at full voice during a performance that evening without showing any fatigue. When he confessed to Ms. Sutherland that in contrast to her he felt tired, she replied that he was not properly controlling his diaphragm. Therefore, Mr. Pavarotti told Ms. Sutherland’s husband, “Excuse me, but I am going to put my hand on your wife’s stomach.” She then demonstrated to him the proper control of the diaphragm.

• Country singers Tim McGraw and Faith Hill became attracted to each other while performing in their Spontaneous Combustion tour in 1996. Right before going on stage, Tim proposed to Faith, who didn’t answer right away. But when Tim returned to his dressing room after singing on stage, he found Faith’s answer written on his dressing room mirror: “YES!”

• Giacomo Puccini enjoyed hunting pheasant. While living in the country so he could work on composing a new opera, he used to hire someone to go to his composing room and play the music he had written so that his wife would think that he was working on the opera when he was really out hunting.

• Sir Rudolf Bing once sat near Mr. and Mrs. Richard Strauss as they attended a performance of Johann Strauss’ Die Fledermaus. Sir Rudolf was astonished when he heard Mrs. Strauss tell her husband, “There, you see, Richard. That is music.” Mr. Strauss did not reply.

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The Funniest People in Music, Volume 2: Buy the Paperback

The Funniest People in Music, Volume 2: Buy in Other Formats, Including PDF

David Bruce: The Funniest People in Music, Volume 2 — Free Speech, Friends, Gays and Lesbians, Gigs

Free Speech

• The punk group the Sex Pistols sang their song “God Save the Queen” during Queen Elizabeth II’s Jubilee Year, which celebrated her first 25 years as Queen. The song contained the depressing refrain of “no future” and rhymed “God save our Queen” with “fascist regime.” It was popular, selling 150,000 copies during its first five days of release and reaching the number 2 spot in the charts. However, newspapers declined to list the song, deciding instead to simply leave the number 2 spot in the charts blank.

Friends

• Music is important to folksingers. Woody Guthrie once arrived for a visit with his friend Pete Seeger. Seeing Woody’s guitar, Pete unslung his banjo, and before they said “Hello” and shook hands, they had played “Doggy Split a Rye Straw,” “Fifteen Miles from Birmingham,” “Going Down This Road Feeling Bad,” “Sally Goodin,” and “Worried Man Blues.”

• Italian baritone Giuseppe De Luca was well liked by his colleagues, although he once had a problem with them because of gambling. Mr. Caruso taught Mr. De Luca how to play poker, and Mr. De Luca soon became so good and won so consistently that Mr. Caruso — and everyone else — declined to play with him.

Gays and Lesbians

• The sister of country music superstar Garth Brooks is gay, and Mr. Brooks made a pro-gay statement in his song “We Shall Be Free.” Actually, it might be more accurate to say that he made a pro-love statement in that song, which celebrates love, whether it is between people of different races or people of the same sex. His sister helped educate Mr. Brooks, who is heterosexual, simply by being who she was. Mr. Brooks says, “The longer you live with it, the more you realize that it’s just another form of people loving each other.”

• Lesbian singer/songwriter kd lang, aka Kathryn Dawn Lang, aka Kathy Lang, created a lot of buzz in the 1990s. In 1992, she even appeared on the cover of Vanity Fair in a photograph that showed her sitting in a barber chair while supermodel Cindy Crawford shaved her. A male journalist once asked Ms. Lang what was going through her mind while she was posing for the photograph. She replied, “Pretty much what would have been going through yours in the same circumstances, I imagine.”

Gigs

• Early in their career, the Ramones played in London on July 4, 1976. Some cool kids who called themselves The Clash hung around during a sound check before the concert and talked to the members of the band, mentioning that they played music, too, but weren’t good enough to play in public. Johnny Ramone told them, “Are you kidding? I hope you’re coming tonight. We’re lousy. We can’t play. If you wait until you can play, you’ll be too old to get up there. We stink, really. But it’s great.” (Of course, this is a great example of punk rock’s DYI — Do It Yourself — attitude.) The concert made headlines. A tabloid used the headline “Glue Sniff Shocker” because one Ramones’ song was titled “Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue.” This amused bass player Dee Dee Ramone, who said, “I hope they really don’t think we sniff glue. I quit when I was eight.”

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The Funniest People in Music, Volume 2: Buy the Paperback

The Funniest People in Music, Volume 2: Buy in Other Formats, Including PDF

David Bruce: The Funniest People in Music, Volume 2 — Free Speech

Free Speech

• During the McCarthy era, free speech was frowned upon — unless your free speech consisted of saying things no more controversial than this: “I love my mother.” African-American entertainer Paul Robeson used his First Amendment right of free speech to point out that at the time the Soviet Union was the only country that had made racial discrimination illegal, and as a result haters of free speech called him a Communist. Mr. Robeson was supposed to sing in Peerskill, New York, but he was not allowed to; instead, a mob called him “Commie” and shouted racial epithets at him. In addition, they beat up his crewmembers and destroyed his sound equipment. Eventually, his concert was rescheduled, and he sang — protected by 1,500 members of a New York union. Mr. Robeson sang well, but the protection by union members was necessary. A mob had gathered and threw rocks at cars as the audience left the concert. Folksinger Pete Seeger attended the concert, and several rocks hit his car. He picked up three rocks and cemented them to his fireplace as a memento of the concert.

• The record album cover for Nirvana’s Nevermind features a 4-month-old baby named Spencer Eldon swimming underwater. The baby’s penis is clearly visible, a fact that made the record company uncomfortable enough to want this particular piece of anatomy airbrushed out. Nirvana composer/singer Kurt Cobain suggested instead that the record company let the photograph remain untouched and instead put this warning label on the cover: “If you’re offended by this, you must be a closet pedophile.” The record company let the photograph remain untouched. By the way, Spencer’s father joked about his son, “He did what David Bowie and the Rolling Stones could never do: full frontal nudity.” (And when Spencer received a platinum record award due to the album’s success, his father hung it in Spencer’s room.)

• Country musicians are known for their use of free speech — on both sides of the issues. For example, in 1992 Toby Keith wrote an American fighting song with the lyric “we’ll put a boot in your *ss, it’s the American way.” In contrast, Natalie Maines, lead singer of the Dixie Chicks, a band from Texas, considered Mr. Keith’s song “ignorant,” opposed President George W. Bush, and even said in a concert in London in 2003 shortly before the second war in Iraq, “Just so you know, we’re ashamed the President of the United States is from Texas.” Mr. Keith responded to the remark by performing in front of a huge faked photograph that purported to show Ms. Maines embracing Saddam Hussein. Ms. Maines responded to T.K.’s action by wearing a T-shirt at a music-awards ceremony — the T-shirt displayed the initials “F.U.T.K.”

• Because of the Broadcast Decency Enforcement Act, which became law in 2005, the Federal Communications Commission can now levy fines of up to $325,000 per violation. What kind of violation? The violations include offending viewers because of indecency. This law has led to very strange things as a result of fear of very heavy fines. For example, British singer Amy Winehouse has on her arm a tattoo of a topless woman. Before she performed on the 2008 televised Grammy Awards, the producers asked her to cover up the nipples of the tattoo. Ms. Winehouse used a ballpoint pen to draw a bra on the tattoo. (Something tells me that Ms. Winehouse was simply being polite and that she does not regard female nipples as indecent.)

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The Funniest People in Music, Volume 2: Buy the Paperback

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David Bruce: The Funniest People in Music, Volume 2 — Food, Free Speech

Food

• When Emma Calvé was studying singing as a young student in Paris, she was very thin — so thin that she shocked the burly butcher whose market was next door. The butcher believed that she needed to eat more meat to gain weight, but he realized that young Emma and her mother had little money. Because he recognized Emma’s great talent as a singer, he told her mother, “To prove to you how much confidence I have in your daughter’s future, I’ll open an account for you at this shop. You can pay me when she makes her début.” Emma imagined that later, after she had become a famous singer, the butcher listened to her in the audience and told the people sitting near him, “Do you see that wonderful singer? It is entirely due to me that she is in such fine form!”

• Gospel singer Mahalia Jackson knew how to ask for the things she and the people around her needed. She once was scheduled to perform a concert in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and a sponsor there had promised to feed her and her driver and her accompanist before the concert. All of them were hungry when they arrived for the meal, and Mahalia was astonished to see a table set with such things as punch, tuna salad, and cheese dip. Mahalia told her hostess, “Wait a minute, lady, I got to sing tonight. This is air — give me some food!” Her hostess fixed a real meal with real food for Mahalia and the people traveling with her — they all ate well and Mahalia sang well that night.

• When opera singer Ernestine Schumann-Heink was a little girl, her pregnant mother developed a craving for Swiss cheese but did not have the money to pay for it. Little Ernestine went to the grocery shop owner and worked out a deal with her. If she gave Ernestine the Swiss cheese, Ernestine would sing and dance the Czardas for her. The deal was accepted, and the grocery shop owner was so pleased with the Czardas that she gave Ernestine an apple as a tip.

• Mid-1950s Metropolitan Opera conductor Fausto Cleva made gnocchi, a particular kind of Italian homemade noodles. At one of his dinners, Mr. Cleva was delighted to hear fellow conductor Arturo Toscanini praise his gnocchi: “Bravo, Cleva!” Mr. Cleva joked, “Don’t say that, Maestro, or I will tell people that you praised me by saying ‘Bravo.’” Mr. Toscanini joked back, “Only for the noodles, Cleva.”

Free Speech

• Many people opposed the United States’ invasion of Iraq, while many people supported the invasion. On March 10, 2003, the lead singer of the popular country-music group Dixie Chicks (who originated in Texas), Natalie Maines, told a crowd at a London concert, “I’m ashamed that the President of the United States is from Texas.” In the United States, many fans and radio stations disagreed. Many radio stations stopped playing their songs, and some of their albums were even burned in a manner similar to book burnings. However, many people widely and enthusiastically supported the Dixie Chicks, who went on tour in the United States, selling out every venue. Ms. Maines explained that the Dixie Chicks supported free speech, and she even encouraged anyone who wanted to, to boo them. At a concert, she told the audience, “We believe in freedom of speech. So let’s stop right now for 15 seconds of booing.” The audience didn’t boo; it cheered. The Dixie Chicks are brave in their support of free speech. At a concert in Dallas, Texas, they received a death threat. They went on stage and performed anyway.

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The Funniest People in Music, Volume 2: Buy the Paperback

The Funniest People in Music, Volume 2: Buy in Other Formats, Including PDF

David Bruce: The Funniest People in Music, Volume 2 — Food, Free Speech

Food

Free Speech

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The Funniest People in Music, Volume 2: Buy the Paperback

The Funniest People in Music, Volume 2: Buy in Other Formats, Including PDF

David Bruce: The Funniest People in Music, Volume 2 — Education, Fans

Education

• Conductor Arturo Toscanini could get the best out of an orchestra. Occasionally, the members of one of his orchestras would be amazed at the beauty they had created under his direction. After a rehearsal of Debussy’s La Mer, a violinist in the NBC Symphony said to music critic B.H. Haggin, “You can quote me on this: We come here to go to school.”

• Emma Calvé was impressed by the upper notes of the castrato Domenico Mustapha, and she asked him how she could produce those notes. He told her that for 10 years she must practice singing with her mouth closed. Ms. Calvé was discouraged at first, but then she began practicing in that way. After two years, she discovered her “fourth voice.”

Fans

• American-born tenor Richard Tucker greatly impressed Pietro Moranzoni, retired conductor of the Chicago Civic Opera. Sitting with theatrical guru Danny Newman, Maestro Moranzoni listened to Mr. Tucker for a while, then asked Mr. Newman, “Theesa tenor, he ees Eetalian, no?” Mr. Newman replied, “No, Maestro, he’s American.” Maestro Moranzoni listened a while longer, then he asked Mr. Newman, “Eesa poppa and mamma, they Eetalian, ah?” Mr. Newman replied that Mr. Tucker’s parents were Romanian Jews. Maestro Moranzoni listened yet a while longer, then he asked Mr. Newman yet another question, “Eesa stody in Eetaly, ah?” Mr. Newman replied that Mr. Tucker had studied in New York City. At this point, Maestro Moranzoni said, “Ah donta care, eesa the best Eetalian tenor ah ever hear!” By the way, Luciana Pavarotti stated in his foreword to the book Richard Tucker: A Biography, by James A. Drake, that the career of Mr. Tucker definitely showed that even non-Italians could become “great Italian tenors!”

• John Lennon had many, many fans, including some in positions of authority. Kim Polson was a long-time fan of Mr. Lennon and the Beatles, and she lived only a block from the Dakota apartment building where Mark David Chapman murdered Mr. Lennon on Dec. 8, 1980. Four months before he died, Ms. Polson saw him in a coffee shop, so she stuck around to hear him talk to a companion. Doing this meant that she arrived two hours late for her job. Her boss was understandably irate, so she said, “Ask me why I’m late.” He did, she explained that she had been listening to Mr. Lennon talk to a colleague, and her boss was no longer irate.

• Like many, many other young girls, Lilie Ferrari had a crush on Beatle George Harrison, and like many, many other young girls, she wrote him a fan letter. Fortunately, she received a reply to her letter — from George Harrison’s mother, who happened to be a fan of Lilie’s mother, a writer of romance novels. The correspondence continued for a while, but slowed as Lilie grew up, although she continued to be one of George Harrison’s fans. Eventually, Lilie married, and her husband, Colin, was OK with her fan-adoration of George Harrison. He even signed his cards to her with “Love from George and The Other One.”

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The Funniest People in Music, Volume 2: Buy the Paperback

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David Bruce: The Funniest People in Music, Volume 2 — Death, Education

Death

• Duke Ellington died of lung cancer, and he knew he was dying. In the last days of his life, he sent his friends his final greeting. It was a card on which was a cross. In the middle of the cross was an O. Lettered vertically on the cross was the word LOVE. Lettered horizontally on the cross was the word GOD.

Education

• Even early in her life, Joan Jett knew that she wanted to play rock and roll. She found a guitar teacher and told him what she wanted to learn, but it didn’t work out because she was so young and inexperienced that she didn’t realize that learning to play the guitar with a teacher involved a traditional educational process that she was unwilling to go through. The guitar teacher tried to teach her to play “On Top of Old Smokey,” but Joan’s response was, “Screw this.” Instead, she got herself a “Teach Yourself To Play Guitar” book, taught herself a few chords, and then started playing along with her records by Led Zeppelin and T.Rex.

• Thomas Beecham was a world-famous conductor, and he found it useful to know how to play various musical instruments. Occasionally, a musician would say that it was impossible to product an effect that Mr. Beecham wanted, so Mr. Beecham would take the musician’s instrument and demonstrate that such an effect was possible. Learning the instruments, of course, took effort. When Mr. Beecham started to learn the trombone, his neighbors protested, and so he ended up practicing in a small boat in the middle of a lake.

• When pop singer/actress Mandy Moore was a little girl, her mother got her a voice teacher, but her mother told the teacher, “If she doesn’t have any talent, tell me. I don’t want to waste your time.” In 1999, teenager Mandy got a hit with the single “Candy,” which propelled her album So Real into a million-copy seller in only 12 weeks. Of course, Mandy quickly became a star. She said back then, “There are people selling ‘What Mandy signed in my fifth grade yearbook’ on the Internet and that’s just scary.”

• Throughout his life, Arturo Toscanini studied music. When he was an old man, he was found in his bed studying the scores of Beethoven’s nine symphonies, although he had conducted the symphonies hundreds of times and had memorized the scores. When his son asked why he was studying scores that he so intimately knew, Toscanini replied, “Now that I am an old man, I want to come a little closer to the secrets of this music.”

• Conductor Pierre Monteux taught at a school for conductors, where a young student tried to impress him while conducting Franz Schubert’s Eighth Symphony. For 25 minutes, Mr. Monteux watched the young student wave his stick in all directions and show off with many expressions, then he told the student, “Now will you please play it again? And this time you will think of Franz Schubert — n’est-ce pas? — and not of yourself!”

• Famed conductor Sir Thomas Beecham once said to a young musician after tea, “I’m going to throw you out now.” When the young musician asked why, Sir Thomas said, “I’m going to have a look at my scores.” “But,” the young musician said, “you always conduct from memory.” Sir Thomas replied, “It is because I’m going to throw you out that I can look at my scores so that I can conduct from memory.”

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The Funniest People in Music, Volume 2: Buy the Paperback