Monthly Archives: November 2019

Music

Louis Jordan’s A Man’s Best Friend Is A Bed (1953)

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My daugh­ters’ piano teacher, Chris, is a gift­ed pianist who plays in a band called Louis Louis Louis. They spe­cialise in jazz, swing, big band, boo­gie-woo­gie and jump blues, focus­ing (as their name sug­gests) on the three great Louis’s: Jor­dan, Arm­strong and Pri­ma. Sad­ly, the time con­straint of the piano les­son win­dow (along with the girls’ mor­ti­fi­ca­tion at any con­ver­sa­tion ini­ti­at­ed by me going beyond nor­mal pleas­antries) pre­cludes me from pro­claim­ing to Chris: “I love Louis Jor­dan!”. Yet it’s true: I dis­cov­ered the mar­vel­lous up-tem­po jump blues and rich vocal tones of Louis Jor­dan and his Tym­pa­ny Five many years ago, specif­i­cal­ly from this com­pi­la­tion album here called Out Of Print:


Jor­dan had start­ed his career in the big-band swing era of the 1930s, being a mem­ber of the influ­en­tial Savoy Ball­room orches­tra, led by drum­mer Chick Webb, in New York’s Harlem dis­trict. He spe­cialised in the alto sax, but also played tenor sax, bari­tone sax, piano and clar­inet. He was also a great song­writer, a con­sum­mate­ly good singer, and had a won­der­ful­ly com­ic and ebul­lient per­son­al­i­ty that soon made him stand out from the crowd. This was the same peri­od that a young Ella Fitzger­ald was com­ing to promi­nence and she and Jor­dan often sang duets on stage.

Jor­dan would soon have his own band, pared down to a sex­tet, and a res­i­den­cy at the Elks Ren­dezvous club, down the street from the Savoy on Lenox Avenue. Their style was a dynam­ic, up-tem­po, dance-ori­ent­ed hybrid of ear­li­er gen­res which became known as “jump blues” and was an instant hit with the audi­ences. His band, the Tym­pa­ny Five, start­ed record­ing music with Dec­ca records in Decem­ber 1938, and through­out the 1940s they released dozens of hit songs, includ­ing Sat­ur­day Night Fish Fry, the com­ic clas­sic There Ain’t Nobody Here But Us Chick­ens, and the mul­ti-mil­lion sell­er, Choo Choo Ch’Boogie.

From July 1946 to May 1947, Jor­dan had five con­sec­u­tive num­ber 1 songs, and held the top slot for 44 con­sec­u­tive weeks, an amaz­ing tes­ta­ment to his pop­u­lar­i­ty at the time. It’s true to say that his­to­ry has giv­en him a raw deal, since his name is not as wide­ly known as it should be, giv­en the above stats (out­side sophis­ti­cat­ed cir­cles such as our own, of course!).

I’ve select­ed a song (from many can­di­dates) that is typ­i­cal of Jordan’s wit and charm: 1953’s A Man’s Best Friend Is A Bed. As well as being a jump­ing tune, the song extols the com­forts of the bed, and on cold morn­ings like today, who can’t relate to that?

Lis­ten to Louis: 

I want a great big com­fort­able bed, so I can real­ly spread out, and all that
Take it from me Ed, A man’s best friend is a bed

I want a big fat pil­low that’s soft­er than a bil­lowy cloud, for my head
Take it from me Nat, the best head piece ain’t a hat

Yes, a friend will ditch you, a horse will pitch you
A car will give you lots of grief
A dog will bite you, your wife will fight you
But if you want some gen­uine relief

Just get a great big com­fort­able bed, where you can real­ly spread out, and all that
Take it from me Ted, a man’s best friend is a bed

When you’re in trou­ble, wor­ries dou­ble
And every­body’s talk­ing back
Just take your shoes off, you’ll shake the blues off
If you would just let go and hit the sack

In a nice cool com­fort­able bed where you can real­ly spread out, and all that
Take it from me Ted, a man’s best friend is a bed

Ask any sol­dier, marine or sailor
Or any­one who’s been with­out, what do they miss most,
What thought is fore­most? No Sir, you’re wrong!

It’s just a great big com­fort­able bed, where you can real­ly spread out, and all that
Take it from me Ted, a man’s best friend is a bed

Yeah, if you dig me Jack, you’ll hit the sack
This ain’t no junk boy, hit that bunk
Take it from me Ted, a man’s best friend is a bed

Louis Jor­dan
Art

Gustave Caillebotte’s The Floor Scrapers (1875)

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Many lead­ing artists in mid-19th cen­tu­ry France liked to test their artis­tic skills by depict­ing farm work­ers and peas­ants at toil in the coun­try­side – Courbet’s The Stone Break­ers (1850) and Millet’s The Glean­ers (1857), for exam­ple.

As the cen­tu­ry wore on, some artists began to explore the con­cept of men and women at work in urban set­tings – Manet’s The Road-Menders in the Rue de Berne (1878) springs to mind, as does Women Iron­ing (1884) by Degas. Of this genre, a per­son­al favourite of mine comes from Gus­tave Caille­botte and is called The Floor Scrap­ers (Les Rabo­teurs de Par­quet).

It depicts three top­less men work­ing on hands and knees, scrap­ing away at a par­quet floor in a Parisian apart­ment (thought to be Caille­bot­te’s own stu­dio). The com­po­si­tion is doc­u­men­tary-style, focus­ing on the actions and tech­niques of the floor-scrap­ers. Day­light enters the room from a win­dow on the far wall and gloss­es the smooth floor­boards with a white sheen. There are sev­er­al floor-scrap­ing tools as well as an opened bot­tle of (pre­sum­ably cheap) wine. The diag­o­nal align­ment of the floor­boards is off­set by the rec­tan­gu­lar pan­els on the far wall and by the curlicue motif of the iron grill on the win­dow and the wood shav­ings that lit­ter the floor. It is a mas­ter­piece of real­ist paint­ing.

His piece was per­fect­ly in keep­ing with aca­d­e­m­ic tra­di­tions, in terms of its per­spec­tive and the mod­el­ling and posi­tion­ing of the nude tor­sos of the work­ers. How­ev­er, despite this, the paint­ing was reject­ed at the 1875 Salon because of its ‘vul­gar’ real­ism. There’s no account­ing for taste. So Caille­botte threw his lot in with the Impres­sion­ists and exhib­it­ed it at the Impres­sion­ist Exhi­bi­tion of 1876.

These days, The Floor Scrap­ers is held in the Musée d’Or­say, although when I vis­it­ed, a few years ago, I was dis­ap­point­ed to find it was not on dis­play – you can’t win ‘em all (and I’ll just have to vis­it again when next in Paris)!

Poetry

T S Eliot’s Macavity The Mystery Cat (1939)

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Thomas Stearns (T S) Eliot (1888–1965) was a giant lit­er­ary fig­ure: one of the major poets of the 20th cen­tu­ry, as well as essay­ist, pub­lish­er, play­wright, and lit­er­ary crit­ic. He was born in St Louis, Mis­souri into a promi­nent Boston Brah­min fam­i­ly, but moved to Eng­land at the age of 25 and set­tled and mar­ried here, becom­ing a British sub­ject in 1927.

With­in a year of arriv­ing in Britain, Eliot had pub­lished his first major poem, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1915), which came to be regard­ed as a mas­ter­piece of the Mod­ernist move­ment, and he fol­lowed that up with some of the best-known poems in the Eng­lish lan­guage, includ­ing The Waste Land (1922), The Hol­low Men (1925), Ash Wednes­day (1930), and Four Quar­tets (1943).

Eliot also had his whim­si­cal side, how­ev­er, and in 1939 pub­lished Old Possum’s Book of Prac­ti­cal Cats. This was a series of light poems about cats and their traits which he’d writ­ten through­out the thir­ties in let­ters to his god­chil­dren (“Old Pos­sum” was fel­low poet Ezra Pound’s nick­name for him). The best-known poem from that col­lec­tion, Macav­i­ty the Mys­tery Cat, is the one that arrest­ed my atten­tion the moment I read it (or heard it recit­ed) when I was a lad (it may well have been the only poem from the Book of Prac­ti­cal Cats that I read or heard recit­ed, giv­en that it was the “stand out” that pri­ma­ry school teach­ers reg­u­lar­ly latched onto).

Eliot was a big fan of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sher­lock Holmes sto­ries and the char­ac­ter of Macav­i­ty is a lit­er­ary allu­sion to Mori­ar­ty, the arch-vil­lain and mas­ter­mind of those sto­ries (Holmes dubs Mori­ar­ty the “Napoleon of crime”, which is how Macav­i­ty is described in the last line of the poem). I loved that repeat­ing final line: “Macavity’s not there!”. It con­jures up the trope of the mas­ter jew­el thief or gen­tle­man spy, always one step ahead of the Law, always out­wit­ting his pur­suers. You can imag­ine the non­cha­lance.

But of course in real­i­ty it’s a cat, so it’s the spilled milk, the feath­ers on the lawn, the crash of a dust­bin lid, the scratch on the sofa…and of course he’s nev­er there. The lit­tle dev­il’s scarpered!

Here’s a record­ing of the man him­self recit­ing the poem:

Macav­i­ty’s a Mys­tery Cat: he’s called the Hid­den Paw—
For he’s the mas­ter crim­i­nal who can defy the Law.
He’s the baf­fle­ment of Scot­land Yard, the Fly­ing Squad’s despair:
For when they reach the scene of crime—Macavity’s not there!

Macav­i­ty, Macav­i­ty, there’s no one like Macav­i­ty,
He’s bro­ken every human law, he breaks the law of grav­i­ty.
His pow­ers of lev­i­ta­tion would make a fakir stare,
And when you reach the scene of crime—Macavity’s not there!
You may seek him in the base­ment, you may look up in the air—
But I tell you once and once again, Macav­i­ty’s not there!

Macav­i­ty’s a gin­ger cat, he’s very tall and thin;
You would know him if you saw him, for his eyes are sunken in.
His brow is deeply lined with thought, his head is high­ly domed;
His coat is dusty from neglect, his whiskers are uncombed.
He sways his head from side to side, with move­ments like a snake;
And when you think he’s half asleep, he’s always wide awake.

Macav­i­ty, Macav­i­ty, there’s no one like Macav­i­ty,
For he’s a fiend in feline shape, a mon­ster of deprav­i­ty.
You may meet him in a by-street, you may see him in the square—
But when a crime’s dis­cov­ered, then Macav­i­ty’s not there!

He’s out­ward­ly respectable. (They say he cheats at cards.)
And his foot­prints are not found in any file of Scot­land Yard’s
And when the larder’s loot­ed, or the jew­el-case is rifled,
Or when the milk is miss­ing, or anoth­er Peke’s been sti­fled,
Or the green­house glass is bro­ken, and the trel­lis past repair
Ay, there’s the won­der of the thing! Macav­i­ty’s not there!

And when the For­eign Office find a Treaty’s gone astray,
Or the Admi­ral­ty lose some plans and draw­ings by the way,
There may be a scrap of paper in the hall or on the stair—
But it’s use­less to investigate—Macavity’s not there!
And when the loss has been dis­closed, the Secret Ser­vice say:
It must have been Macavity!’—but he’s a mile away.
You’ll be sure to find him rest­ing, or a‑licking of his thumb;
Or engaged in doing com­pli­cat­ed long divi­sion sums.

Macav­i­ty, Macav­i­ty, there’s no one like Macav­i­ty,
There nev­er was a Cat of such deceit­ful­ness and suavi­ty.
He always has an ali­bi, and one or two to spare:
At what­ev­er time the deed took place: MACAVITY WASN’T THERE !
And they say that all the Cats whose wicked deeds are wide­ly known
(I might men­tion Mungo­jer­rie, I might men­tion Grid­dle­bone)
Are noth­ing more than agents for the Cat who all the time
Just con­trols their oper­a­tions: the Napoleon of Crime!

2nd June 1951: Amer­i­can-Eng­lish poet and play­wright, TS Eliot (1888 — 1965). He wrote amongst many oth­er things, ‘The Waste Land ’ and the plays, ‘The Cock­tail Par­ty’ and ‘Mur­der in the Cathe­dral’. Orig­i­nal Pub­li­ca­tion: Pic­ture Post — 5314 — Are Poets Real­ly Nec­es­sary? — pub. 1951 (Pho­to by George Douglas/Picture Post/Getty Images)