Ian Whitcomb is a highly respected performer, composer, and
music historian. You can find all of his CD's, DVD's, Books,
and Songbooks by
clicking here,
or by going to ianwhitcomb.com
LETTER FROM LOTUSLAND
August 2010
Only days away from my departure for
the Oregon Festival Of American Music in Eugene. I managed to stretch
preparation for this two-week stint of “work” to almost six months --- to
Regina’s distraction. She realizes that I’m working on songs and lectures and
concerts and getting paid -- but she wonders why it must take up so much of the
year, take me away from her and domestic duties, and so, in the final
analysis, she might well ask am I just using OFAM as an excuse to kill time, to
put off whatever it is I ought to be doing….
My own distraction or side-tracking (or dare I say “research”) is always absorbing. And time wasting, perhaps. For example, today I went to YouTube to watch “The Monkey Song” from “The Jungle Book” cartoon movie. (Notice I don’t use that pompous word “animation”) It’s one of the songs I have to perform at OFAM in a special Disney concert. Hitherto all I’d heard was a soundtrack recording — over and over in the car for that’s where I listen to music, that’s my classroom -- and I’d taken great delight in the impromptu nature of it, especially after all the too-too precise Broadway renditions of other songs I have to sing, all that machine-made diction.
Louis Prima and Phil Harris seem to be having a whale of a time. I thought I heard a ukulele, too. But then I always hear ukuleles. I loved the scatting in a way I’ve never loved it before. In fact, I loathed jazz scatting until this monkey song. Which was written by my old friend Dick Sherman, a fellow I’ve known since the 1960s, since before he wrote the number. I must call him and hear his side of the story. I mean — a Disney expert just told me, at lunch, how Prima’s band wanted extra money for background vocals and how Disney — you never mess with them -- expertly edited the recording tracks so that they wouldn’t have to pay. And how later, much later, two kid Disney directors called in old gentle giant Phil Harris to play his Jungle Book character in some new version. And how Harris, a kindly man, suggested that his lines weren’t true to the Baloo he knew. After all, he WAS Baloo. The whelp directors let him extemporize on the real Baloo and then thanked him, wished him well, and let him go. Afterwards they sighed and said they’d better call in that sound-alike hack who imitates Phil Harris. Can’t have any actors trying to be creative.
Anything exciting to report about this last month? (I never like to reveal much about the future, about the month at the top of this Letter, because if I did I’m sure my plans would never happen, and if they did happen they’d not turn out like I’d imagined).
So — anything to report?
As usual the Bungalow Boys & Regina played the doctor’s July 4 party in Brentwood. The hot dogs and salads were as delicious as ever (although I missed the potato salad topped with bacon bits) but mortality had claimed several guests as it does each year we’ve played here and there are no replacements so that pretty soon this party, like Dixieland Jazz, will die. There was more wheelchair and walker traffic, directed by stern-faced black men in white caregiver coats. Brave guests who have suffered strokes were aided round the tiny dance floor on the terrace below us. Determination filled the air, accompanied by “With My Eyes Wide Open I’m Dreaming”. After the fireworks everyone left. It was around 9pm. Mind you, that’s becoming my bedtime hour of choice. After all, I’m now in my 70th year — my birthday was July 10, same as Marcel Proust and Arlo Guthrie.
I’m hoping every day that Julie D’Angelo, who represents my music for movies and such, will call with good news. I have great expectations about one project but I can’t tell you any details because then it would never happen. And every day I hope the computer will list a letter from “Mungo Jerry”, the email address of the publisher of poor old “Letters From Lotusland”, the massive 500-page book. But, as I write, there’s been no word for ages and I despair of ever being able to get another copy of this book except at the online lulu.com customer rate and that’s pretty high. Where the devil is Mungo Jerry? Buggering about in the mountains again?
And the hammering goes on and on next door every day, even on weekends. It has sent Regina to the Valium bottle. The extensions grow higher, our view of trees and sky diminishes daily, sawdust covers the blackberries on our fence (which our preacher neighbor claims as his fence) and we see big windows emerging so that eventually the preacher and his flock can watch our goings on thus ending any plans for romantic interludes. Close the blinds! -- you say. Yes but then they can listen in. But will they? No! They’ll be praying and hollering and testifying. So what’s my problem?
I’ve been attempting to build a relationship with the construction boss, a well-built gleaming-pated black man of ivory complexion. His name is Paul and he responds to our requests. For example: he has been most obliging in setting up traffic cones outside our house so that his Mexican workers don’t park there any more; he has swept up their cigarette butts and paper cups and burger wrappers. He has offered to help us in any way he can. In return I gave him my CD “Sentimentally Yours” with the caveat that the music is peaceful and calming.
Paul told me yesterday how much he’s enjoying the music. He introduced his brother, who’s helping out on the site, and his brother agreed that my music is certainly most peaceful and calming. Emboldened, feeling brotherly, I gave out my entire name. Paul in turn told me his last name is King and that his brother is Rodney. Rodney King? THE Rodney King? Yes, indeed. Why not? After all, Rodney King is an Altadena resident. I read it in the paper.
Mind you, I was rather taken aback at learning that such a notorious historical figure is hammering next door to us. And I wished I’d introduced Rodney to my pacific music before the unfortunate episode with the cops that led to the L.A. Riots. Maybe my music could have changed history. Maybe he and the cops could have danced a merry jig to my ukulele. It was as if Adolf Hitler had been painting the house next door and I had brainwashed him with George Formby and the rest was the undoing of history. No — I’m stretching this too far…
Jane Quinn, my devoted manager in England, sends me CDs by the week, all of them worthy. Then for my birthday she sent a real corking present: the 1946 Radio Fun Annual. I already have 1945. As a child I used to be given the weekly comic together with Film Fun. Inside were comedians having adventures in a timeless landscape of long fences and bollards. Laurel & Hardy and Red Skelton turned up in English street scenes. At the end of the strip there was often a reward of a slap-up supper consisting of a mountain of mashed potatoes stuck with sausages.
On the cover of the 1946 annual is a beautiful painting in muted 40s austerity colors of a dog and cat dancing a jig to a wireless broadcasting the BBC Dance Band. I took a quick look at some of the stories inside and was hooked on one about a boy who teases the birds in his garden, scaring them away so they can’t eat the food laid out by his kind sister. He gets his come-uppance when the birds invade the family dining room to sweep the tablecloth off the Sunday dinner table. In the garden they enjoy the roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. The boy wakes up — it’s all a cautionary dream-- goes down to his real dinner and never again is nasty to the little birds.
On Saturday, foolishly (but it was hot and we were
nowhere near a beach), we went to an Arc Light cinema — very comfy and well
ordered — to see the much-trumpeted new science-fiction
blockbuster “Inception”. I should have known from the title and the director
that this would be pretentious poppycock from the mind of an
adolescence-arrested nerd. No proper story, no engaging emotional content,
special effects on a roller coaster. Like an endless montage of action movie
trailers — explosions, machine gunners on skis, autos bashing up each other, you
know the routine. As vacuous as today’s’ pop culture always is. I blame “Star
Wars”.
On Sunday, though, Regina went to stay at her brother’s house in Pacific Palisades to take care of the children while the parents were away. That evening, alone at home and sitting close to our biggish screen so as to feel I was in an actual theatre, I put on a restored version of “Hello Frisco Hello”, the 1940s Technicolor Fox musical set at the turn of the 20th century and starring Alice Faye and John Payne. Fluff to some but a fine alternate reality to me. At the end Faye wins back Payne by crooning lovingly from her big eyes into his: “You’ll Never Know”. I thought of World War Two and my father and other matters of the heart. Her eyes, her voice seemed so sincere. I was actually on the verge of tears but I checked myself, as one must. There were miles and miles of heart in movies of yesteryear, a universe from the harsh and horrid ice-cold techno of today’s inceptions.
Christopher Nolan, the director of this blockbuster, was 16 when he got the notion to make a film about a man climbing into other people’s dreams, rummaging around there and even giving them ideas. When I was only a little older, in 1958-60, I kept a short “Thoughts” book in which I tried to express the struggle I was having in finding my artistic voice. Much of it is pretentious twaddle too, pathetic even, but I leave you with a few patched together entries to show you how I was back then. In a state of permanent adolescence. Eventually I escaped into college life in another country, Ireland, where I once again became part of a community, the kind I’d flowered in earlier while at boarding school in Dorset. Bands, revues, a college magazine--I started flowing again. And then came America. And here I am. Trying to keep entertaining leaving then laughing and eschewing pretentiousness.
Now why on earth did I say, “eschew” when I should have said, “avoid”?
And now — some early 1960 “Thoughts”:
I’m very glad I’ve been attending the Putney School of Art. It had become necessary to FORCE the creations & ideas out of my head. I decided to draw and paint purely objectively and have now some 5 or 6 life drawings of consequence. They are realistic and fairly correct but with an emphasis on style. Firstly I concentrate on shape interest and relations of masses—then on tones & textures. Pencil techniques, etc. Of course the techniques are not always correct but they have a beauty of their own--only they mustn’t become isolated….I am not a finished artist and therefore have not yet collected up all the MEANS of expression that I shall eventually use. If I didn’t take from Life or Nature then I should be tied down to a severely limited number of symbols of ideas. Actually this juncture of my life is beginning to reveal truths at last…I’m using my eyes much more on Nature because I’m being forced to seal up my loquaciousness. I mean, I haven’t many friends and those I have don’t seem as friendly as they were when we were at school last summer. My best friend March never returns my phone calls, yet I know he’s seeing Scott and I thought we were all good friends like we were at school.. So—in my paintings I draw from inanimate objects more than from people…I feel now that I am fundamentally more secure in myself and that I am forming a SELF which is not all-reliant on OTHER PEOPLE…..Yesterday I actually got James (Scott) on the phone—I trapped him. We arranged to meet up in the West End. At last! Someone to exchange ideas with! We had lunch at El Cubano, the Mexican café, where I had sausage and eggs. He told me about his life as a student at the Slade art college (after I’d finished telling him about the film studio where I’m working on “Tunes Of Glory”, making the tea and rolling off the script page copies and making the workers groan when I go on about the cinematic theories of Pudovkin and Eisenstein). James said the students at the Slade paint their own private work after hours in their home studios… We went to see “Hiroshima Mon Amour”, a French film. It was a love story about a French actress and a Japanese in modern day Hiroshima. I think... Some of the narrative was hard to follow but I made notes afterwards. It seems she can’t get over her love for a German boy she knew in Nevers during the war just before the bomb fell on Hiroshima. I think..James wouldn’t divulge his opinion. Afterwards we went to his studio for a look at his latest work. All abstracts. I asked James what he thinks of as he paints abstracts. He said NOTHING. We discussed our different attitudes towards ART… I stayed for supper with Mr. & Mrs. Scott in their cozy Chelsea flat. His father William is a famous abstract painter. Very famous. Table talk subjects: the lack of startling newness in present day music. Then we talked of Harry Lauder and Danny Kaye and I was on much surer and safer ground. I felt well again for the first time in ages. And as I walked to catch the Tube my underpants stayed where they were, no longer riding up my thighs causing chafing. I even glanced at myself in a shop window and didn’t feel embarrassed. Things are definitely looking up.
The photo shows improvements in my artistic life—a realization that popular music was my forte and not High Culture. To this end I formed The Ragtime Suwanee Six in 1961 and soon we were playing parties at Surrey country houses. Here is the band at one such party: From left to right: Robin Whitcomb, Dave Hartley, John “Sweaty” May, Anton Matthews, Johnny Toogood and me.
Ian Whitcomb
is a highly respected performer, composer, and music historian. You can find all
of his CD's, DVD's, Books,
and Songbooks by
clicking here,
or by going to ianwhitcomb.com