The Arts – davidbruceblog #2

David Bruce: The Coolest People in the Arts — Work

Work

• Comic singer Anna Russell once worked in a pantomime at the Ashton Circus in Australia, which is as famous there as the Ringling Brothers Circus is in the United States. Most of the pantomime performers stayed in hotels, but Ms. Russell decided that she wanted to experience the circus life, so she rented a trailer and stayed with the circus performers. At the end of the season, she was presented with a medal that had her name on one side and the Ashton crest on the other. According to the ancient tradition of the circus, she could get a job — even if it is nothing more than washing the elephants — at any circus in the world simply by showing the circus her medal.

• Régine Crespin, a woman of conviction, was supposed to sing the title role in Tosca, but during a rehearsal she sang a phrase faster than the conductor, Francesco Molinari-Pradelli, wanted her to sing it. He told her, “Signora, that phrase does not go that way.” Very politely, she replied, “Maestro, if you don’t mind, we can discuss these details afterward.” Mr. Molinari-Pradelli then rudely said, “No, there is nothing to discuss. It will be done as I say, and that’s that.” This was too rude for Ms. Crespin, so she said, “Tant pis” [roughly, “So much for me working for you”], left, and Mr. Molinari-Pradelli was forced to find another person to sing the role of Tosca.

• In 1948, Sir Thomas Beecham was scheduled to present a program of English music at the Royal Albert Hall, but few tickets were sold and he cancelled the concert. Sensing an opportunity, the Bournemouth Corporation immediately called him and asked him to present the same program using their orchestra in Bournemouth — and they guaranteed a full house. Sir Thomas accepted, and conducted in front of a full house, as promised. Playing celesta in the Bournemouth orchestra was Rudolph Schwarz, the regular conductor of the orchestra, who wanted the privilege of playing for Sir Thomas.

• Duke Ellington played in a lot of places as a young jazz musician, including a club near Broadway that was supposed to be run by gangsters and that oddly kept catching on fire. Occasionally, the owner told Mr. Ellington and the other musicians that a certain night was a good night to take their musical instruments home because an “accident” was about to happen. By the way, Mr. Ellington understood the power of word-of-mouth advertising. When he was a young musician, he used to pay people to go around and tell other people how good he and his band were.

• Walking through the Louvre, Paul Valéry and artist Edgar Degas saw a large painting of large oak trees by Henri Rousseau. Mr. Valéry admired the painting, and he marveled at how the artist had painted so many individual leaves. He said, “It is superb, but how tedious, painting all those leaves. What a dreadful bore that must have been.” Mr. Degas responded, “Be still. Had it not been tedious, there would have been no enjoyment in it.”

• Mexican artist Diego Rivera put his art before everything else. Often, he worked 15 to 18 hours a day, every day of the week. He would snack rather than eat, and his common-law wife, Guadalupe Marín, once complained that he didn’t stop working long enough even to take a bath. During 1932-1933, Mr. Rivera worked so hard painting murals that he lost 100 pounds!

No one ever thinks of ballerinas collecting unemployment insurance, but they do. During the off-season, when all the ballet dancers were laid off, ballerina Alice Patelson used to go downtown to the unemployment insurance office on 90th Street and Broadway, where she would see other dancers with the New York City Ballet.

• Robert M. Brinkerhoff, the cartoonist of the long-ago comic strip Little Mary Mixup, had a yen for travel and a strong work ethic. The two worked well together. Before he traveled to the Orient, he turned in 100 cartoons to the United Feature Syndicate. For two years previously, he had created one extra cartoon each week.

• While choreographing a new production of Swan Lake, Peter Wright told ballerina Galina Samsova, who was to be carried by the dancer playing Rothbart, that she had to be down the alley formed by two rows of swans in a very quick time. Ms. Samsova laughed, then said, “I’m easy — I’m being carried.”

• When New York City Ballet ballerina Wendy Whelan was asked what she liked least about her choice of careers, she replied, “The knowledge that it’ll be over.” (What she likes most are the people she works with.)

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David Bruce: The Coolest People in the Arts — Work

Work

• Tarina Tarantino creates fashionable jewelry and is the head of her own company. Her hair is also fashionable: hot pink. She says, “I got married with pink hair. I had two babies with pink hair. And I’ll be an old lady with pink hair.” To make her particular color of hot pink, her hair stylist mixes four shades of colors. Why hot pink? She explains that she “wanted to experience a way of living through color.” Once, a woman in a coffee shop said to her, “You must have a very tolerant boss to allow you to come to work with pink hair.” Ms. Tarantino replied, “Actually, my boss has the same color hair.” As the head of her company, she has to manage a staff of design assistants and factory workers. One young employee was unhappy with her performance review, so she asked Ms. Tarantino to speak to her mother. Ms. Tarantino replied, “Your mother doesn’t work here.” Her office and manufacturing facility is called the Sparkle Factory, and in 2011 it moved to another building on which the graffiti artist Banksy had received permission to paint an exterior wall. He painted a picture of a girl on a swing — the word “Parking” had been turned into “Park.” Ms. Tarantino got her big break when actress Cameron Diaz wore a Tarantino bracelet to the 2002 Oscars. These days, Ms. Tarantino believes, movie stars all have consultants who tell them what to wear. These days, she says, her own big break “would never happen.”

• Like many writers, Carl Sandburg had a great wealth of experience from his childhood and his many jobs to draw upon for inspiration. As a young boy, he was arrested for skinny-dipping in a neighborhood pond. His parents thought that the arrest was silly; they had seen Carl naked when he was born, and they saw him naked whenever he took a bath in a laundry tub. Young Carl once got a summer job washing bottles from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. in a bottling works. (This was before modern child-labor laws.) He was allowed to drink as much soda pop as he wanted, and he drank so much that he got diarrhea and lost his job. For a while, he rode the rails as a hobo. One night he and four other hoboes tried to sleep in an empty boxcar, but it was so cold that they gave up and walked to a jail where a kind sheriff let them sleep on the floor of a cell. When Carl attended college, he had a job as a firefighter. His professors knew that whenever the town’s fire whistle blew, Carl had to leave class and fight a fire.

• As a beginning cartoonist, Ted Rall wanted people to see his art. After meeting graffiti artist Keith Haring, he thought, “Hehas the approach.” What is the approach? Instead of working to please editors, who are pleased by generic work, simply get your art in front of the people. Therefore, Ted took his cartoons, went to the bank he hated working at, and ran off 700 copies very early in the morning on the bank’s Xerox machine. Then he and his girlfriend walked through Broadway, Harlem, and Times Square and pasted the cartoons wherever they could. The walk and pasting took four hours and covered seven miles. He put his PO address on the cartoons and got fan mail — and he got letters from editors who wrote, “I was visiting New York. I saw your cartoon on the wall and ripped it down. I was wondering if you’d mind if we ran your cartoons.” Ted quit the bank job he hated and became a professional cartoonist.

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David Bruce: The Coolest People in the Arts — Wit

Wit

• People respond to music in different, but often witty, ways: 1) John Cage’s 4’33” is a composition that can be performed by anyone any way he or she wishes as long as the performance takes exactly 4 minutes and 33 seconds. A notable performance of the piece involved a pianist sitting at a piano for exactly 4 minutes and 33 seconds without striking a single key. After hearing about this performance, Igor Stravinsky said that he wished to hear a full-length composition by Mr. Cage. 2) George Bernard Shaw once ate at a restaurant where a band played popular music. The proprietor of the restaurant brought him a card on which he could write what he wanted the band to play. Mr. Shaw wrote, “Dominoes.”

• Many people in ballet are witty: 1) Ballet dancer George Zoritch was once requested to give a speech, even if it were only two words long. Therefore, he stood up and said, “One! Two!” His speech was rewarded with laughter. 2) Ballet dancer Igor Youskevitch once told a beautiful waitress, “If I may be so bold, a martini is like a beautiful girl’s bosom. One is not enough, but three is too many!” 3) Pavel Petroff had a dry wit as a Russian ballet teacher. Sometimes, he would tell some of the students in his class, “A ballerina you will never make, but a seamstress, perhaps!”

• Many critics are witty: 1) Eugene d’Albert was asked to read and express his opinion of a piano concerto by German composer Max Vogrich. Mr. d’Albert looked at the concerto closely and then stated his opinion: “The ink and paper are excellent.” By the way, an English lord became known as Lord Monday because he fell in love with German operatic soprano Henrietta Sontag and followed her the way that Monday follows Sunday. (Sonntagmeans Sunday.) 2) A critic wrote these puns in the 1870 Musical Standard: “We hangon every note Madame Sontag sings — / This proves the lady’s great powers of execution.”

• Tom Waits has been a successful singer-songwriter for decades, but he is far from being a sell-out, in more ways than one. In her book Tom Waits, Cath Carroll includes a discography but does not include information about how high the songs or albums reached on the record charts. Mr. Carroll writes, “ … noting chart positions on a Tom Waits discography is like putting Barbie clothes on a bulldog.” By the way, Mr. Waits can be witty. He once said, “She’s been married so many times she’s got rice marks all over her face.”

• Paul Beard used to lead the orchestra for Sir Thomas Beecham. Later, he led a different orchestra — the BBC Symphony Orchestra — upon which he stamped his personality and at which Sir Thomas was asked to be a guest conductor. At the end of a rehearsal, Sir Thomas stood in front of the orchestra, stroked his goatee, and said, “May I suggest to you, gentlemen, that when we reassemble, you pay a little more attention to thisbeard?”

• Sir William S. Gilbert was funny in real life. Once, an obese lady attended one of his rehearsals. While his back was turned, she disappeared, so Sir William asked a stagehand where she had gone. The stagehand pointed to some scenery and said, “She’s round behind.” Sir William replied, “I asked you for her geography, not her description.”

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David Bruce: The Coolest People in the Arts — Weight, Wit

Weight

• When Simon Doonan, the world-famous window dresser at Barney’s in New York, began aerobics, one of his fellow enthusiasts was a reporter for theNational Enquirer, and she constantly asked him if he had any dirt on celebrities. He never did, but actress Shelley Winters came into Barney’s one day, and he saw her buy a pair of leather pants — size six. Ms. Winters is a wonderful actress, of course, but she is not a size six. The leather pants were not a gift, and she was not planning on wearing them; instead, she was planning on hanging them on her refrigerator door as a reminder of why she wanted to lose weight: to fit into size-six leather pants. At his next aerobics class, Mr. Doonan told the National Enquirerreporter what he had witnessed, and she took notes. Soon an item about Ms. Winters and her size-six leather pants appeared in the National Enquirer, and soon a check for $50 arrived in Mr. Doonan’s mailbox with the notation “for Shelley Winters item.” Mr. Doonan felt guilty, and he wondered if he had betrayed Ms. Winters. But the next day, some designer aerobics wear arrived at Barney’s. Among the items was a pair of cycle shorts by Stephen Sprouse. They were orange, black, and white, and they cost $50. Mr. Doonan bought the cycle shorts and stopped feeling guilty. He says, “I was the talk of my aerobics class that night.”

• Anton Dolin once danced with Alexandra Danilova at a time when she was overweight. After he had lifted her several times in the Blue Bird pas de deux, he complained to her, “I am a dancer — nota porter!” Ms. Danilova began dieting immediately.

Wit

• The Guerilla Girls engage in activism for artists who are women or people of color. They wear gorilla masks and are anonymous, taking on the names of deceased famous women creators. Guerilla Girl “Frida Kahlo” once was out of costume and talking with some other people to art dealer Diane Brown. By them was a poster that the Guerilla Girls had put up. Diane’s young son read the poster out loud: “Diane Brown […] shows less than ten percent women artists or none at all.” He then asked his mother, “What does that mean, Mommy?” She did not answer him, but later when she appeared in a CNN TV special titled Gender Wars, she complained that the Guerilla Girls had attacked her because she showed less than fifty percent women artists. “Frida Kahlo” complains, “Math is soooohard for women.” By the way, Guerilla Girl “Käthy Kollwitz” was out of costume and talking to a male chief curator and his female assistant when the male chief curator turned to “Käthy Kollwitz” and said about his female assistant, “I think she’s a Guerilla Girl.” “Käthy Kollwitz” asked why he thought that, and he explained, “Because every time we propose a group show, or get an announcement from another museum, she always counts the number of women artists. Don’t you think that’s ridiculous?” Guerilla Girl “Käthy Kollwitz” replied, “Not at all. All women count.”

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David Bruce: The Coolest People in the Arts — Travel, War

Travel

• Cellist Pablo Casals was born and grew up in Catalonia. While on tour in the United States, he visited the territory of New Mexico. While walking in the desert, Mr. Casals and pianist Léon Moreau came across a cabin. The cabin’s owner, who was dressed like a cowboy, greeted them. Mr. Casals noticed his accent, and he asked the man where he was from. “It’s a country you never heard of,” the man said. “Catalonia.” Mr. Casals enjoyed seeing and learning new things. To understand the life of coal miners in the United States, Mr. Casals and Mr. Moreau went down into a mineshaft in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. When Mr. Casals and Mr. Moreau reached the surface again, it was time for their concert, which they gave while still covered with coal dust.

• Despite being born in Boston, George Copeland played Spanish music very well and even lived in Spain; however, he abandoned his Spanish villa just before a revolutionary war broke out. He had a good reason. One morning, he discovered one of his Loyalist servants on the patio. More specifically, he found the servant’s head — the rest of the servant was nowhere to be found.

• When choreographer Anthony Tudor first came to the United States, he arrived on Columbus Day. All the banks were closed and no bonds had been posted, so he was forced to remain on Ellis Island that night. Fortunately, he enjoyed the company he found there.

War

• Some people have the money but not necessarily the intelligence to attend significant musical events. A truly intelligent pianist, Denis Matthews, once overheard this during a program conducted by Arturo Toscanini: “When is Toscanini coming on? Don’t tell me he is only the conductor!” By the way, Mr. Matthews played piano for the British armed forces during World War II. During a blackout, an old woman saw him and some other musicians. She saw that they were wearing uniforms, and supposing that the instruments many of the musicians were holding were lethal weapons of war, told them, “That’s right, lads — give them hell!”

• When opera singer Maria Callas was a young girl, she sometimes got caught lying, so her mother used to punish her in accordance with an old Greek custom — she put pepper on young Maria’s lips. By the way, Maria’s Uncle Filon was a saboteur for the Greeks during World War II. He worked as an engineer at an air base for the Nazis, and he managed to destroy nine German airplanes by putting sugar in their gas tanks. The Nazis discovered what he was doing, so he had to flee for his life. After the war, the Communists who tried to take over Greece killed him.

• To protest war, artist David Smith created a series of Medals for Dishonor — bronze medallions with anti-war imagery. Because the public supported World War II, it disliked the medallions, but that didn’t bother Mr. Smith: “Never sold a one. But I would rather have the approval of other artists and critics than monetary sales reward.”

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David Bruce: The Coolest People in the Arts — Problem-Solving, Respect, Stage Fright, Travel

Problem-Solving

• John Christie was a very rich man. While listening to a musical performance in a very hot theater (in the days before air conditioning), he grew very uncomfortable, so he used scissors to cut off the sleeves of his shirt and dress jacket.

• Fans once surrounded Pablo Picasso at a time when he did not want to be surrounded by fans. No problem. He took out a gun he had with him and fired it into the air, and very quickly he was no longer surrounded by fans.

• American dance pioneer Ted Shawn came up with an original way to stop obesity in the United States. Simply require everyone to stand for one hour per year naked in public — vanity would soon make obesity vanish.

Respect

• Alexandra Danilova was asked about the difference between a very good ballet dancer (a soloist) and a ballerina (of course, not every woman ballet dancer is a ballerina — only the very best are). She replied, “Ballet is Giselle. Door of cottage open. Pretty young soloist comes out. You happy and say ‘I hope she do well.’ Another performance. Is also Giselle. Alicia Markova come out. She not danced yet. One step only, but you sigh and say, ‘Ah! ballerina!’ You do not ask, you know. She is star. She shine.”

• Suzanne Farrell was a great admirer of ballerina Diana Adams. Once, Ms. Adams gave her a pin of a mouse with painted whiskers and a long tail. Thereafter, Ms. Farrell pinned the mouse — despite its scratchy tail — inside her bra for good luck at important ballets. In addition, Ms. Farrell named her diary, to which she confided her inmost thoughts, “Diana.”

Stage Fright

• Greek-American soprano Maria Callas suffered terribly from stage fright before giving a performance. Before performances, Ms. Callas used to hold onto the arm of someone in the wings. Her dresser once displayed her arm to Sir John Tooley — it was bruised from the wrist to the elbow. Once, Ms. Callas’ fingernails drew blood from another supporter’s hand.

• Famous pianist Adolphe Henselt suffered so badly from stage fright that he used to stay offstage until the very last minute, then rush onstage to play his solo before running offstage again. Once, he had to rush so quickly to the piano that he wasn’t able to put out his cigar first, so he had to smoke throughout his solo.

Travel

• Fashion designer Vicky Tiel tends to dress comfortably for flights, as do many people of wealth and fashion. For one flight, she wore ripped jeans and a ripped jean jacket. She had a boarding pass for first class, but the stewardess looked her over and made her sit in coach, although she protested. She says, “Didn’t the hostess know that the antitravel look is for those who reallytravel? The well-dressed couple in first class is actually the pretty secretary sleeping with her older boss, hoping to move up to trophy wife.” When she arrived in Atlanta, she wanted to file a complaint, but Leticia Moise from CNN Atlanta recognized her and suggested a story: “The Fashion Designer Who was Thrown Out of First Class.” Ms. Tiel modeled the clothing she was wearing, and Ms. Moise asked a passerby, “Would you let her into first class?” He looked her over, and then he said into the microphone, “H*ll, no!”

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David Bruce: The Coolest People in the Arts — Problem-Solving

Problem-Solving

• Enrico Caruso was a strong believer in personal hygiene. Once, he and his wife accepted an invitation to sit in the box of a French tenor. However, after he was seated, Mr. Caruso turned to his host and said, “Monsieur, Madame cannot remain unless you go home and brush your teeth.” The French tenor went home and brushed his teeth. By the way, according to Mr. Caruso’s wife, Dorothy, in the course of each performance he lost three pounds.

• While in Milan to direct The Nutcrackernear the end of his career, Rudolf Nureyev handled an ultimatum by a principal dancer with finesse. As Mr. Nureyev was walking away from the set, the principal dancer said that she would not dance on opening night unless her boyfriend also had a leading part. Still walking, Mr. Nureyev ordered that another principal dancer be found to take her place. The ballerina immediately retracted her ultimatum.

• Opera singer Grace Moore often answered her own telephone; however, being a celebrity, she disguised her voice with a French accent until she learned who the caller was. Sometimes, she was unable to identify important callers and so would not speak to them. Discovering the truth later, they were not amused at the precaution she had taken to preserve her privacy.

• John “Trane” Coltrane used to play long saxophone solos, and once he told Miles Davis that he didn’t know how to stop. Mr. Davis replied, “Try taking the saxophone out of your mouth.” By the way, jazz musician Dizzy Gillespie started out playing the trombone as a kid, but he quickly switched to trumpet — he couldn’t play all the notes on the trombone because his arms were too short.

• As a young boy, ballet student Alexander Godunov was short, even considering his age. After being told that tomato juice would make him grow, he began to drink gallons of it. He also heard that sleeping on a soft bed would keep him short, so he began to sleep on boards. Something worked — he grew to be over six feet tall.

• Even people who don’t like classical music like Gioacchino Rossini’s “Overture” to William Tellbecause it is the theme music of the Lone Ranger. According to Rossini, he wrote the music at a furious pace in an apartment on the Boulevard Montmartre in Paris because he was trying to block the noisy street from his mind.

• George Frideric Handel once had trouble with Francesca Cuzzoni, one of the singers in his opera Ottone. Being quite strong, Handel picked up Ms. Cuzzoni and held her out a window, two stories above the street, and threatened to drop her. Ms. Cuzzoni decided to sing her part the way Mr. Handel wanted her to.

• Conductor Claudio Abbado has an interesting way of dealing with an orchestra whose members speak too loudly during rehearsals. He speaks softer and softer and finally stops speaking entirely. At that point, the members of the orchestra realize that they need to be quiet in order for the rehearsal to proceed.

• Choreographer George Balanchine was remarkably unperturbed during crises. In 1954, shortly before the premiere of his Nutcrackerballet, he learned that the costumes weren’t ready. Therefore, he picked up a needle and a costume and started sewing along with the seamstresses.

• Colonel W. de Basil sometimes insisted that he be photographed although the newspaper photographer really wanted only photographs of the Colonel’s ballet troupe. In such cases, the photographer pretended to photograph the Colonel — but there wasn’t any film in the camera.

• Tony Baines, a bassoonist for the London Philharmonic Orchestra, once made the error of showing up for the ballet in tails rather than black tie. No problem. He simply dipped his tie in black ink. Of course, it dripped all over his shirt, but he declined to let that bother him.

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David Bruce: The Coolest People in the Arts — Problem-Solving

Problem-Solving

• Ron Galella is the perhaps most famous of all paparazzi, aka celebrity photographers. Marlon Brando once punched him, knocking out five teeth. After being treated at an emergency room and having his jaw wired, Mr. Galella went back to get more photographs of Mr. Brando. The next time that Mr. Galella wanted to photograph Mr. Brando, Mr. Gallela was wearing a football helmet for protection. While making the movie Three Days of the Condor, actor Robert Redford wanted to avoid being photographed by Mr. Galello. While at TheNew York Timesbuilding, Mr. Redford — in the words of Roger Ebert, who respects the tenacity of Mr. Galello — “entered one end of the building, raced through its second floor to the other end, slipped into his trailer, disguised his stand-in as a double, and had him run to his car and be driven away.” From a safe distance, Mr. Redford was able to watch Mr. Galello jump onto the trunk of the limo to snap a photograph through the back window.

• In Thomas Beecham’s early years, England had many choir masters with perfect ears but limited music education. Nevertheless, they could make the choir sing — and sing well. Mr. Beecham knew of one case where an elderly composer was asked to conduct his own music, but unfortunately arrived in the town too late to rehearse with the choir before the concert. At the concert, the composer began to conduct the music at a tempo much slower than the choir had rehearsed it, with the result being musical chaos. The choir master, horrified, shouted, “Take no notice of him [the conductor] — sing it as you’ve learned it.” The choir came together, sang mightily and well — and the orchestra and conductor were forced to go along with the choir’s tempo.

• Alicia Markova’s father died when she was very young, leaving the family destitute. Her friend Anton Dolin wanted her to dance with Sergei Diaghilev’s dance company, but Mr. Diaghilev would not hear of it, in part because he was not interested in child prodigies and in part because he was displeased over publicity that the dancers in his company were British. (Mr. Diaghilev changed their names when they joined his company. Anton Dolin’s real name was Patrick Kay, and Alicia Markova’s real name was Alicia Marks.) Therefore, Mr. Dolin and Ms. Markova’s dance teacher Seraphine Astafieva arranged an audition by trickery. They invited Mr. Diaghilev to a party at which Ms. Markova entertained by dancing. Mr. Diaghilev was astounded by what he saw, and he invited her to join his dance company.

• From 1948-1957, the New York City Ballet was based at City Center. During all that time, NYCB founders George Balanchine and Lincoln Kirstein never drew a salary. Instead, when they needed money, they found it elsewhere. For example, Mr. Balanchine would make money on Broadway or by staging a ballet for another dance company. When Lincoln Center was built, American ballet master Mr. Balanchine wanted it to be perfect. After learning that the orchestra pit would hold only 35 musicians, he was furious — until his wishes were heeded, and some already-poured concrete was jackhammered into pieces in order to double the size of the orchestra pit.

• Ballet dancers have tricks to make them forget how much their feet hurt. During a ballet class, David Howard once told Leslie Browne while she was doing a series of pirouettes, “This is where you imagine you have a huge piece of gum in your mouth and you push it against the roof of your mouth with your tongue as hard as you can, hoping to push the gum through.” Ms. Browne was confused by this comment, until Mr. Howard told her, “Then you will forget how much your feet hurt.”

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David Bruce: The Coolest People in the Arts — Prejudice, Problem-Solving

Prejudice

• When African-American jazz musician Louis Armstrong was a little boy, he learned about the Jim Crow laws in New Orleans. One day, he got on a streetcar, and he sat in a front seat, not knowing that the streetcar was segregated and that black passengers were supposed to sit in the back. A white woman told him to sit in the back, but young Louis simply made faces at her. Angry, the white woman stood up, grabbed Louis, and hauled him to one of the seats in the back of the bus. By the way, early in his career, Mr. Armstrong was riding in a car through New York City’s Central Park when the radiator cap blew off. Immediately, police officers surrounded the automobile and searched its African-American passengers to see if they were carrying firearms. Of course, not everyone is prejudiced. Mr. Armstrong was friends with white jazz trombonist Jack Teagarden, who once told him in the slang of the time, “You a spade and I’m an ofay. We got the same soul. Let’s blow.” By the way, as a very young boy, Louis wanted to learn to play the cornet, but he didn’t have enough money to buy one. Fortunately, a Russian Jewish immigrant family he worked for, the Karnofskys, loaned him the money to buy a cornet. This is fortunate because Mr. Armstrong was very influential; he blazed a path for so many other jazz musicians. Dizzy Gillespie once said about Mr. Armstrong, “No him, no me.”

• The great black dancer Bill Robinson, aka Mr. Bojangles, once was in an all-night diner at 4 a.m. He ordered a meal, but the server told him, “We don’t serve your kind.” Mr. Bojangles took out his gun, laid it on the table, then gave his order again. This time he was served, but after eating he was arrested by a rookie deputy. However, he was immediately released because he was a friend of the sheriff. Mr. Bojangles always took steps to become friendly with police officers in every town he played. His wife was also very good at public relations, writing the chief of police in each town her husband played to give warm wishes to the chief’s wife and to give them free tickets to the show. By the way, Mr. Bojangles had a serious weakness for vanilla ice cream, and reportedly ate four to eight quarts per day.

• Benny Goodman, a white, Jewish jazz musician, formed the Benny Goodman Trio. The group consisted of himself, drummer Gene Krupa, and pianist Teddy Wilson. In addition to creating excellent jazz, the group represented a major step forward in race relations because Mr. Wilson was black. Previously, white and black musicians had not played together in public. At the time the group was formed, the 1930s, racism was prevalent in the United States. For example, in 1931, Earl Hines and the members of his jazz band were not allowed to walk on the sidewalks in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, because they were black. They had no choice but to walk in the streets.

Problem-Solving

• Arturo Toscanini had poor eyesight — he memorized his scores so that he didn’t need to refer to them during performances or rehearsals. He once wanted perfection in the tinkling of some very small antique cymbals to be used in Berlioz’ “Queen Mab” scherzo. Several musicians failed to meet Toscanini’s standards, so Sam Borodkin — who played such instruments as the bass drum, glockenspiel, tam-tam, and gong — said that he would try to do it. Mr. Borodkin succeeded brilliantly — but through the use of a trick. Instead of using two antique cymbals and hitting them against each other, he used a metal triangle stick and hit it against one antique cymbal. Because Toscanini had such poor eyesight, and because Mr. Borodkin was bent over his music stand, hiding the metal triangle stick, the trick succeeded in fooling Maestro Toscanini. By the way, someone was amazed at Maestro Toscanini’s phenomenal memory — as demonstrated by his conducting without a score in front of him — and asked, “Tell me, maestro, how do you learn all those scores from memory?” Toscanini replied brusquely, “I learn them.”

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David Bruce: The Coolest People in the Arts — Opera, Poets

Opera

• Whenever Enrico Caruso performed, ovations greeted him. Therefore, he decided to perform an experiment to see if the audience would applaud him if they were unaware he was singing. He went to Albert Reiss, who was scheduled to sing an aria offstage in Pagliacci, and he arranged to sing the aria in Mr. Reiss’ place. Unfortunately, Mr. Caruso received no applause, and no music critic noticed that Mr. Reiss had suddenly acquired a glorious voice. Mr. Caruso sadly noted, “It is not Caruso they want — it is only the knowledge that they are hearing Caruso!” By the way, Mr. Caruso sang with great power. When he performed Lucia for the first time at the Metropolitan Opera, Mr. Caruso sang with such force that a police officer showed up to find out where all the sound was coming from. Mr. Caruso said, “Aha! I sing too loud! I must look out for that.”

• Opera singers have very powerful voices. While in Paris, Gioacchino Rossini heard two powerful singers performing together. He wrote to a friend of his in Italy: “Lablache and Tamburini sang the duet from Bellini’s I Puritani. I need not tell you anything about their performance. You surely heard it for yourself.”

• Christoph Willibald Gluck revolutionized opera. His controversial style caused much excitement in his opera Armide, whose premiere was packed. An usher requested one man in the audience to take off his hat, but the man replied, “You take it off; it’s so crowded here that I can’t move my arms.”

Poets

• As you may expect, Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, winner of the 1971 Nobel Prize for Literature, loved nature. As a boy, he and other boys engaged in fights in which they pelted each other with acorns. Sometimes, he would closely examine the color and shape of an acorn — an examination that was interrupted when the other boys pelted him with large numbers of acorns. People loved him and his poetry, which has been translated into many different languages. When Mr. Neruda was in political exile from Chili in 1949, he went to Europe and artist Pablo Picasso helped him get permission to stay in France. Mr. Neruda said, “He spoke to the authorities; he called up a good many people. I don’t know how many marvelous paintings he failed to paint on account of me.” On 11 April 1957, Mr. Neruda was arrested in Argentina because of his Communist leanings and put in jail for one and a half days. When he was released, one of his jailors gave him a gift. Mr. Neruda said, “I was about to leave the prison when one of the uniformed guards came up to me and put a sheet of paper in my hands. It was a poem he had dedicated to me. … I imagine few poets have received a poetic homage from the men assigned to guard them.” Also, he was delighted in May 1967, when he attended the Congress of Soviet Writers in Moscow and a floor-polisher saw him and recited from memory one of Mr. Neruda’s poems. Of course, Mr. Neruda loved books and was influenced by such poets as Walt Whitman. As a recognized poet, he kept a photo of the bearded American poet on his desk at Isla Negra (Dark Island). A workman once looked at the photo and asked Mr. Neruda if the photo depicted his grandfather. Mr. Neruda replied, “Yes.”

• At age 23 Langston Hughes was both an undiscovered poet and an employed busboy. He worked in the restaurant of the Wardman Park Hotel in Washington, D.C., and he knew that famous poet Vachel Lindsay would be reading his poetry at the hotel. As an African-American in those Jim Crow days, Mr. Hughes knew that he could not attend the whites-only poetry reading, but he hoped to see Mr. Lindsay. When Mr. Lindsay and his wife sat down in the hotel restaurant to eat, Mr. Hughes approached their table and left three poems there. He wrote later, “Quickly, I laid them beside his plate and went away, afraid to say anything to so famous a poet, except to tell him I liked his poems and that these were poems of mine.” Mr. Lindsay liked the poems, and at his poetry reading he announced that he had discovered a new and promising young poet, and he read all three of Mr. Hughes’ poems. The next morning, Mr. Hughes was interviewed and photographed by newspaper employees. Mr. Lindsay also gave the young poet a gift: a set of books by Amy Lowell, along with the recommendation to study her poems. Later, Mr. Hughes wrote about Mr. Lindsay, “He was a great, kind man. And he is one of the people I remember with pleasure and gratitude out of my bewildered days in Washington.”

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THE COOLEST PEOPLE IN THE ARTS

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