FLASH!! Some of the BELLE kids are joining me the afternoon of July 18th in Bloomington Indiana, for a skit and a song or two on WFHB's Live Radio Variety Show, with my good buddy Mike Kelsey. Anyone interested can listen in live via WFHB's MP3 webstream.

Ben Hecht has written: "I met John Gilbert at a dinner party. He came home with me and we talked all night. In Hollywood's most glittering days, Jack Gilbert glittered the most. He got $10,000 dollars a week and he was allowed to keep most of it. He lived in a castle on top of a hill. Thousands of letters poured in daily, telling him how wonderful he was and there were no enemies in his life. He was as unsnobbish as a happy child. He went where-ever he was invited. He drank with carpenters, danced with waitresses. He made love to whores and movie queens alike. He swaggered and he posed, but it was never to impress anybody. He was just being "Jack Gilbert" -- a butterfly, a Japanese lantern, and the spirit of romance."

"Well, what's wrong with that?" Gilbert famously replied, with his usual off hand candor. "My own mother was a whore."

Mayer was so enraged at this affront to motherhood in general that he jumped up and nearly attacked Gilbert on the spot.

Gilbert was born John Pringle, in Logan Utah in 1897, to actor parents who worked in stock companies. He found work as an extra in Thomas Ince's film company in l916. He later signed with Fox and then MGM in 1924. His breakout role was in King Vidor's 1926 version of LA BOHEME, with Lillian Gish. After the death of Valentino, Gilbert was second to none in the male romantic lead department.

I had a lovely time driving to and from Rockingham County, through countryside unfamiliar to me for the most part -- up Hwy 311, which partly follows an old railroad track (the Norfolk Southern? The Atlantic and Yadkin line?) evidenced by some ghostly grand old homes along the way, in Walkertown, and Walnut Cove (which 'began' in 1830's from land purchased by two Moravians, Mr. and Mrs. William Lash. Through the years the family developed it into a large plantation which was named Walnut Cove, supposedly from the sheltered coves of the meandering Town Fork Creek and the walnut trees that grew abundantly in the area.) -- and Madison, and other towns, such as Dennis, that I had never heard of. On the radio: a beautiful Dmitri Shostakovich sound track to a 1955 Russian movie called "The Gadfly" ("Ovod" in Russian).
(Yellow car painting by Clyde.)

Dennis Rickman passed away February 21st. A memorial service was held Friday Feb. 26th at the Eno River Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in Durham. There were lots of folks there from the old Cradle days. Jim, Bill Joe and I provided some music. Gary Christopher has posted photos (thanks to Jan Pulley) from the memorial reception on Snapfish.

Dennis was sweet person and a surprising friend and had a very interesting life: FMI. I had the honor, as did a couple other folks, of recording some of his short stories, which his brother Bryan would like to collect on CD. I will definitely have news about that when it happens.

He's news to me anyway, though I'm sure most conscientious appreciators of 19th and 20th century music is already familiar with Charles Villiers Stanford (1852–1924). I only heard his music this week, very early Sunday morning. I was sleepily listening to "With Heart and Voice" the excellent choral music show hosted by Richard Gladwell, from WXII Rochester. This is one of the best pure music shows on the radio, and happily my local NPR affiliate (WFDD) carries it. Anyway, I am lying in bed watching the first beams of the sun on the pine trees and this gorgeous choir comes on singing this gorgeous hymn "O For A Closer Walk With God" (musical setting of 17th century Scottish plainsong by Stanford, and words by William Cowper). Though I'd grown up hearing the hymn I was riveted by the setting and performance. Stanford's setting sounds like it could have been written yesterday or twenty years ago, or a hundred years from now (hopefully!) The recording I heard was from the CD "In Tune With Heaven" featuring the Girls and Men of Norwich Cathedral and Thomas Leech, conducted by Julian Thomas. There's a great YouTube vid, a little 7 min documentary of this song being recorded by the choir of St. Mary's Cathedral, Edinburgh, Scotland. It's wonderful to see the actual human beings who sing and record this stuff and sound like the angels they must be. And they are little KIDS! Little girl and boy choristers, and some older kids mixed in. All standing around a mic in their shirt-tails, twisty legged and cowlicked.

Charles Villiers Stanford was a native of Dublin. Several of his songs and piano pieces were published while he was still a child. He studied at Queens’ College, Cambridge, and eventually became the conductor of the Cambridge University Musical Society. He was a Cambridge Professor of Music all his life and was one of the founding members of the Royal College of Music. Two of his pupils were Ralph Vaughn Williams and Gustav Holst. He was organist of Trinity College and also held the post of conductor to the Bach Choir (you can tell he'd listened to a LOT of Bach choral cantatas!) He wrote all kinds of music, even romantic comic operas, in particular "The Critic" and "Shamus O'Brien". He was knighted in 1901. He was said to be irascible. Lord knows he pulled off one absolutely gorgeous life changing piece of music. (Listening to that tune all day and then finding out in the evening that Dennis Rickman had passed away are linked in my mind.) Anyway, I'm happily adding Stanford to my gallery of eccentric Victorian mensas, including:

I've been fascinated by Sabine Baring-Gould since I was a kid. It was the name, really. (In my childish mind it meant "Ancient Exotic Italian Bringing Money".) I'd see it in the hymnal at our church. Baring-Gould wrote the words to "Onward Christian Soldiers" and "Now the Day is Over" -- not too shabby! Then, sometime in the 70's I went into the book store one day and saw a Dover Press-like reproduction of Baring-Gould's THE BOOK OF WERE-WOLVES, which was a treatise on Lycanthropy ["the magical ability to assume the form and characteristics of a wolf" -- see Nicholas Cage in MOONSTRUCK!] I had to buy the book, of course. I'm sure if I had been born in the 60's or 70's I would have been a goth.

The wikis report: "Stories of Baring-Gould's eccentricity have been exaggerated. He did for a time, have a bat in his care while he was teaching at Hurstpierpoint. More usually it lived in an old sock in his room, where its life was ended when a housemaid stepped on it. It is also told how, at a children's party he asked a small girl, "And whose little girl are you?" whereon she burst into tears, and said: "I'm yours, Daddy." This story was verified by his daughter, Joan, who said that the little girl had been herself."

"He also found time to write over 100 books, including 30 novels and a mammoth 16-volume Lives of the Saints. His works cover a huge range of topics: theology, folklore, social commentary, travel & history. At one point there were more books listed under his name in the British Museum Library than under that of any other English writer." But he was not just an author: he was an archaeologist, architect, artist, teacher and a collector of English folk songs. But Baring-Gould (or should I just call him Sabine?) regarded his principle achievement as the collection of folk songs. He published several influential volumes: one of which, SONGS OF THE WEST, was edited by none other than Cecil Sharp.