Slouching Towards Birdland (Will Friedwald's SubStack)

In March of 1988, the American Jazz Orchestra, which had been formed by Gary Giddins and Roberta Swann two years earlier, presented a rare performance of Duke Ellington’s elusive masterpiece, the 1943 Black, Brown and Beige. I was very pleased to be asked to write a review of that concert for The Village Voice. I was 26 at the time, and I have never been able to see that story again since The Voice’s online archive doesn’t go back that far.

For many years I have had four close friends who all live within a few blocks of each other in midtown: the filmmaker and director Jim Burns, the producer Scott Perrin, the New York living legend, Bill Boggs, and the amazing piano colossus, Monty Alexander; to this very day, are all still living around the corner from each other around West 54th Street and Broadway.

This started as a Substack note, but I started writing and before too long, I realized it was way too long for that. So, here it is. I rushed this out somewhat faster than the usual post, I want people to read it while Independence Day 2026 is still in memory yet green, so I apologize in advance for any typos and boo-boos.

“Married I Can Always Get” Music and Lyric by Gordon Jenkins Introduced by Beverly Mahr Jenkins on the 1956 Capitol album, Gordon Jenkins Complete Manhattan Tower Introduced on live television by Helen O’Connell, on Saturday Spectacular, October 27, 1956 I try to be careful about referring to celebrities by their first names, but I believe I know Mel Brooks well enough to refer to him informally as Mel.

Yes! I made it just under the wire. I wanted to get in a Judy Garland story before the end of this month, because, as everyone knows, June is the perfect time to celebrate Garland the great, who was born on the 10th in 1922 and died on the 22nd, a much-too-short 47 years later.

This Father’s Day, the Knicks were a special present to my late dad. It turns out that it was a gift I paid forward, as they say. Without quite being aware of it, I sent John Pizzarelli a Father’s Day present—a gift by which he would remember his own late father, the legendary Bucky Pizzarelli.

It’s hard to believe that it’s been four years since Ken Poston at KSDS Jazz 88.3 San Diego asked me to do a weekly radio show, focusing around jazz vocalists (and what I call “jazz-adjacent” artists) and songs.

In the summer of 1926, another pair of songwriters had the same idea as Berlin; veterans Buddy DeSylva and Lewis Gensler wrote songs for a show called Queen High, which ran for more than ten months (September 1926 to July 1927) and they included their own song with the same title.

“Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” Music & Lyric by Irving Berlin Introduced in London and first recorded by Joyce Barbour in R.S.V.P. (1926) Introduced in America by Groucho Marx (as “Henry W. Schlemmer”) and chorus girls in The Cocoanuts (“Summer Edition”) (1926) From Robert Kimball, The Complete Lyrics of Irving Berlin: “Published. Copyrighted June 28, 1926. Previously registered for copyright as an unpublished song May 20,1926.

In his autobiography, Fred Astaire remembers how “Ukulele Ike stopped the show every night with “Fascinating Rhythm,’” in the 1924 Broadway show Lady, Be Good!. We have no film footage of that, alas, but we can watch Edwards stopping the show with “Singin’ in the Rain” in TheHollywood Revue. This is in spite of how the 1929 release was very literally an all-star affair, and virtually every member of the cast was someone more familiar to motion picture-goers than Edwards.