I profiled my collection of 640 jazz LPs in my blog “Portrait of an LP-Era Jazz Fan: Part 1.”

Below is my collection of 440 CDs (early 2022). 

​As with my LP collection, I fell in love with the music of an eclectic mix of jazz musicians. Similarly, I purchased multiple albums by my jazz favorites as shown below: 

Interestingly, Miles Davis, Charles Mingus, Henry Threadgill, Andrew Hill, Abdullah Ibrahim, and Chico Freeman also ranked highly on the LP album list. Frank Sinatra and Duke Ellington CDs got an additional boost in support of books I authored, namely Duke Ellington at the White House, 1969, and The Best Gig In Town: Jazz Artists at the White House, 1969–1974.
​
Twenty-eight percent of my CD collection consists of multiple buys from the 16 artists above.

The remaining 72 percent consists of four, three, or fewer CDs per artist and include a number of singular, transcendent, one-of-a- kind albums, some of which I’ll examine in detail in my next blog.

​Since June of 2015, I have posted 80 blogs on all manner of musical topics jazz, pop, and R&B. There are book reviews, record reviews,  festival reviews, TV and film reviews, and music industry reviews covering a wide range of artists, including Ethel Ennis, Peggy Lee, Frank Sinatra, Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, Charlie Christian, Carmen de Lavallade, Dizzy Gillespie, Tony Bennett, Dave Brubeck, Wayne Shorter, Tom Waits, Ronnie Roulette, and many, many others. 

In the list below, segregated by year, I list the title to facilitate a quick and easy search to discover, for example, whether I ever covered a certain event, or book, or TV show or artist, or what in fact I was blogging about in the first place. A click on the March 2022 blog and a quick scan of the monthly titles will point you in the right direction.
  
As for me, I'll just keep on blogging.
​

​​June  Book Review: Herbie Hancock Possibilities
July  Top 10 Jazz Albums: Eric Byrd
August  Nixon and Khrushchev Agree on Jazz
September Top 10 Jazz Albums John McLean
September Singer Ethel Ennis in the Inaugural Spotlight
October  Top 10 Jazz Albums: Roy Suter
November Review: HBO Sinatra Special
December  That Anniversary Year 2015: Part 1
December  That Anniversary Year 2015: Part 2

January  Into the Stockpile with Duke Ellington
February  Landing the Greatest Gig: Jazz at the White House
March  Top 10 Jazz Albums: Andrew White
March Ellington on his White House Tribute
April The State of Jazz: The Upside
May  The State of Jazz: The Downside
June Miles and Me at the Modern Jazz Club
July  Book Review: Duke Ellington as Pianist: Part 1
August  Book Review: Duke Ellington as Pianist: Part 2
September Duke Ellington: The Accidental Songwriter: Part 1
October Duke Ellington: The Accidental Songwriter: Part 2
December  Looking Back 50 Years: Notable Jazz Albums
December That Anniversary Year 2016: 50 Years Ago
December That Anniversary Year: Celebrating Charlie Christian

January Duke Ellington’s Far East Suite Revisited
February To Duke from Mathew Shipp
March Nixon White House: The Record Library and Willis Conover
April Nixon White House: A President’s Taste in Music
May  Sinatra’s Two-Song Serenade for JFK and Nixon
June  The Ellington Tribute Jam Session: Military Band
July  Jazz Is Dead Redux
August  Ellington Standards: Most Widely Performed
September  JFK: The Lost Inaugural Gala
October  Kennedy Centers Honoree Carmen de Lavallade
November  Guest Post: Book Review of Serendipity Doo-Dah Book One
December  Looking Back 50 Years: Part 1
December Looking Back 50 Years Part 2
December Looking Back 50 Years Part 3
December Looking Back 50 Years: Notable Jazz albums of 1967
​​​

January  Book Review: Dizzy, Duke, Brother Ray and Friends
February  Blue Rose: The Clooney/Ellington Collaboration
March  Duke Ellington: America’s Premier Composer?
April Book Review: Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington
May  Guest Post: Business Advice From Miles Davis
June  Bennett and Brubeck: Still Great After All These Years
July  Nixon and Ellington Medal of Freedom
August  Faine Favorites: Top 10 Alto Sax Albums
September The Story of the Music Industry
October Phillip Glass Tribute: Music In Twelve Parts
November  Native Dancer: Tribute to 2018 Kennedy Center Honoree Wayne Shorter
December  Notable Jazz  Albums of 1968 
December That Anniversary Year: Celebrating Four Jazz Centenarians

January  When Did the Popular Singer-Songwriter Era begin?
February  Book Review: The 50 Greatest Jazz Piano Players of All Time
March  Armstrong and Ellington: Two Masters of Modernism
April  50th Anniversary of the Ellington Birthday Tribute
May Royalty Thieves
June  Book Review: Help (Duke Ellington) by Thomas Brothers
July One from the Heart: An Underappreciated Movie Soundtrack: Part 1
August  One from the Heart: An Underappreciated Movie Soundtrack: Part 2  
September  Foundation Funding for Jazz
October Portrait of an LP-Era Jazz Fan: Part 1
November Portrait of an LP-Era Jazz Fan: Part 2
December That Anniversary Year 2019: Celebrating Four Jazz Centenarians
​

January  Newport All-Stars: Lost and Found
February  Peggy Lee: “Is That All There Is?”
March  President Carter’s White House Jazz Festival
April  Jazz and the Summer of Love
May 1958: The Best Year In Jazz, Part 1
June 1958: The Best Year In Jazz, Part 2
July 1958: The Best Year In Jazz, Part 3
August 1958: The Best Year In Jazz, Part 4
September 1958: The Best Year In Jazz, Part 5
October 1958: The Best Year In Jazz, Part 6
November 1958: The Best Year In Jazz, Part 7

September  Another Happy Musical Accident from John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman
October  The Sinatra-Bowie Connection
November  The Best “Where Songs Come From” Story
December  Jazz Events at the LBJ White House

January Tribute to  Ronnie and her Relatives, aka the Ronettes
February All Jazz Roads Should Lead to the Birchmere
March FaineBooks Blog 2015–2022
April  Portrait of a CD Era Jaz Fan: Part 1
May  Portrait of a CD Era Jazz Fan: Part 2

Sometimes, all it takes is one lucky break to make a hit record or launch an unknown singing group. Other times, it takes more than one. Case in point: the Ronettes — lead singer Ronnie, older sister Estelle, and cousin Nedra.

The trio had been singing together for over a decade at Manhattan churches and bar mitzvahs, but had yet to break out. No radio gigs or club or theater dates, and certainly no recordings, perhaps to be expected due to their rather youngish ages.

In 1961, the girls — Nedra (15), Ronnie (18), and Estelle (20) — decided to check out the Peppermint Lounge, the hottest nightclub in New York City, ground zero for the twist dance craze (based on Chubby Checker’s 1960 hit “The Twist.”)

The trio waited in line to enter, even though Nedra and Ronnie were underage (still in high school). To look older, they stuffed Kleenex in their bras, dressed in the same outfits, and held cigarettes in their hands.

When the club manager came out, he spotted the group and shouted, “Girls, you’re late. Get in here.” He thought they were the dancers he hired to do the twist.

Estelle piped up, “No, wait, we’re not the — ."

Ronnie elbowed her in the ribs before she could finish, and they followed the manager inside, where he told the girls to dance behind the house band and sing. Of course, they could do both, so they sang Ray Charles’s “What’d I Say” and were hired on the spot.

In no time, the girls loved what they were doing and so did the nightclub audiences. They acquired a manager and started making records as Ronnie and the Relatives (cute name). None of the sides charted, but gigs picked up all over New York City. Still no hit records or concerts in theaters.

They would need something else to reach the next level.

The owners of the Peppermint Lounge opened another Peppermint in Miami, and the Ronettes opened there as well. Popular New York disc jockey Murray “the K” Kaufman happened to be on vacation and attended a Ronettes performance.

At the close, “the K” told them, “I wish I had some girls like you who lived in New York.”

Ronnie replied, “What, are you crazy? We live in New York.”

That’s all it took. Gigs on his radio show and stints on his rock ’n’ roll revues at the Brooklyn Fox Theater soon followed. The trio worked with popular Motown standouts the Temptations, Smokey Robinson, the Marvelettes, and Little Eva.

By 1963 the Ronettes were the only act on Murray’s shows that didn’t have a hit record. They would need another something for that.

The girls decided it was time for a new producer and label. They first thought of Phil Spector, having seen his name all over a slew of records as co-writer and producer. Plus, he had his own label, Philles, and was around their age, 21. But how could they reach him?

Ronnie and Estelle decided to cold-call him — considered a no-no in the business — at his office. Estelle had the more polished grown-up voice and convinced the secretary to put her through to Spector. She spoke to Phil for a couple of minutes, and miracle of miracles, he wanted to see them at Mirasound Studio the very next night.

A half a year later, the singing trio hit gold, real gold — Gold Star Recording Studios in Los Angeles, where they recorded “Be My Baby” for Phil Spector on his Philles label, their first hit record!

And what a hit record it was, reaching number 2 on the Billboard Pop Chart, and with the fullness of time, ranked number 22 on Rolling Stone Magazine's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time (2020 edition). How to explain all of this? Talent will out, of course, but not without a happy musical accident or two or three.[1]

CODA
With a big hit under their collective belts, the Ronettes performed at several stateside concerts before they toured the UK in early 1964. Because their records sold so well there, they were now concert headliners and — dig this — the Rolling Stones (Mick, Keith, and the boys) opened their shows.

The trio also met and hung out with the Beatles (Paul, John, George, and Ringo) before their first American tour. Ronnie told the soon-to-be Fab Four that they had to go to the Peppermint Lounge when they visited the States.

When the Beatles arrived in America on February 7, they went directly to the Peppermint hours after their Pan Am Jet touched down. Whether they danced the Twist and sang a song for the manager is not known.[2]

CODA CODA
The “Be My Baby” session was primarily known for the Ronettes singing, but in some circles, it was equally known for the producer’s Wall of Sound. Spector employed 14 musicians to create a lush, echo-laden sound that was the Rosetta Stone for pioneer studio producers George Martin of the Beatles (Sgt. Pepper) and Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys (Pet Sounds).

The session was also known for the irregular, infectious Latin sounding beat instituted by drummer Hal Blaine when he dropped his stick by accident on the 4 beat and just played the 2 throughout. On a usual rock and roll song, the snare drum is hit on the 2 and 4. In this case, no 4. [3]

CODA CODA CODA
Sadly, Ronnie died on January 12, 2022. RIP.

1. Marc Myers, Rock Concert: An Oral History as Told by the Artists, Backstage Insiders, And Fans Who Were There (Grove Press, New York, 2021), 76–79.
2. Ibid., 80.
3. Edward Alan Faine, Serendipity Doo-Dah: True Stories of Happy Musical Accidents, Book One  (Takoma Park, IM Press, 2017), 79–81.

​

​​John F. Kennedy was the first president in modern White House history to sponsor jazz events. The first was a concert featuring the Newport Jazz All-Stars, Dave Brubeck Quartet, and the Tony Bennett Trio assembled on the Washington Monument grounds (Sylvan Theater) on August 28, 1962; and the second, a concert by the Paul Winter Sextet in the East Room on November 19, 1962.[1]

The jazz ice was broken. America’s musical poor sister was finally recognized. 

It was up to the successor president, Lyndon B. Johnson, to act on the jazz precedent set by JFK. And did he ever!

As if to make up for the long oversight, the Johnson administration hosted 16 jazz events during its 62-month run. Jazz had finally received its just due by a president and first lady whose musical tastes would not be described as refined but who believed it their duty to showcase the widest possible range of artistic expression at the nation’s showroom.

LBJ invited such notable jazz luminaries as Duke Ellington, Stan Getz, Sarah Vaughan, Charlie Byrd, and Dave Brubeck. See more details below:
​

​LBJ made up for the decades of official neglect of America’s premier jazz composer by inviting Ellington and his orchestra to give the final performance at the White House Festival of the Arts on June 14, 1965. 

On an erected stage on the South Lawn, Duke presented sections of what would become his Far East Suite, followed by selections from his tone statement on the African American plight in America — Black, Brown and Beige (1943), featuring the lovely hymn “Come Sunday.” 
​
He closed out the concert with an Ellington 12-hit-song medley that included “Solitude,” “Sophisticated Lady,” “I’m Beginning to See the Light,” and “Caravan.”

From the sound recording available at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC, here is a transcript of the event:

Opening Remarks by Dancer Gene Kelly
Historians tell us jazz began in New Orleans, and some historians tell us it began at a certain spot called Congo Square, a dusty lot down there. That may be so, I really don’t know, but I know it’s a long road from Congo Square to Carnegie Hall, and a longer musical way still.

But jazz made it, riding on the well-tailored coattails of Duke Ellington some twenty-two years ago. He and the great artists of his ensemble took Lady Jazz out of her off-the-racks cotton dress and put her in a long velvet gown.

​Ladies and Gentlemen, if there had never been a Duke Ellington, jazz would have had to invent him. So it’s with pride I present the Duke.

The Duke Ellington Orchestra
“Take the ‘A’ Train” 
[Applause follows.]

Duke Ellington Introduction
Thank you very much, Ladies and Gentlemen. That’s a warm welcome. Our first selection we would like to do is a result of our visit to the Far East a year and a half ago; we went to the Far East for the State Department on a cultural exchange program. And, of course, it was a tremendous inspiration to us all on being exposed to the beauty and enchantment of the Orient.

​And so as a result, we wrote a suite of numbers. We would like to play some of them now. We would like to say this is being done also in gratitude for the great people of the State Department Foreign Service office, who guided us so magnificently through the tour. It is called “Impressions of the Far East”:

The Duke Ellington Orchestra
“Amad” feature for Lawrence Brown (tb)
“Agra” ballad feature for Harry Carney (bs)
“Bluebird of Delhi” feature for Jimmy Hamilton (cl)
[Applause follows.]

Duke Ellington Introduction
Thank you. And now we would like to go from “Impressions of the Far East” to “Black, Brown and Beige,” which of course was done originally in 1943, and hasn’t really been done until this year in our concert appearances. This is our tone parallel to the history of the Negro in America. 
Tonight, we should like to do a suggestion of the work song theme and the spiritual theme, and a development of the two into a sort of montage. “Black, Brown and Beige”:

The Duke Ellington Orchestra
Work theme
Spiritual “Come Sunday” theme feature for Ray Nance (v) and Johnny Hodges (as)
Work and spiritual theme montage for trumpet, Harry Carney (bs), and Lawrence Brown (tb)

Lady Bird Johnson Wrap-Up
May I thank all the artists who have made this a rich, full, varied day for us all. It’s been wonderful. And now I’d like to have you all go to the tents for a bit of refreshment. I expect some of you need a hot cup of coffee. Perhaps you’d like to view the art in the garden and the east corridor. Thank you all. 
[Applause follows.] 

Duke Ellington Encore Introduction
I hate to impose on you like this, Ladies and Gentlemen, but we have a request for several of the things we have written and we’d like to play some of them for you that have become popular here. 

The Duke Ellington Orchestra
​“Solitude”
“I’ve Got It Bad” feature for Johnny Hodges (as)
“Don’t Get Around Much Anymore” feature for Duke (p)
“In the Mood”
“I’m Beginning to See the Light” (uptempo)
“Sophisticated Lady” feature for Harry Carney (bs)
“Caravan” (uptempo)
“The Opener” (uptempo feature for Paul Gonsalves [ts], Buster Cooper [tb], and Cat Anderson [tp])
“Things Ain’t What They Used to Be”

Total time: 44:44 minutes.

1. This and subsequent text is excerpted from Edward Allan Faine, Ellington at the White House, 1969 (Takoma Park, MD: IM Press, 2013), 24, 25, 32, and 211–214.

​

In the conclusion to my first book on happy musical accidents, I gathered statements by 20 songwriters about where their songs came from. To a person, they claimed they didn’t write their songs, but rather, someone or something else did: smoke, the ancients, spirits, ghosts, God, nightmares, whatever.

Some examples:

Carole King: “The song was written by something outside myself, through me.”

Hank Williams: “People don’t write music. It comes to you. You sit there and wait and it comes to you.”[1]

Then along comes Reverend Gary Davis, who adds to this consensus view in, well, the funniest of all such stories, courtesy of Dave Van Ronk in his memoir The Mayor of MacDougal Street.

Reverend Davis, a blues and gospel singer proficient on guitar from Durham, North Carolina, settled in New York City in the late 1940s and influenced numerous musicians in the Greenwich Village “folk” crowd in the 1950s and 1960s. 

Up-and-coming folk trio Peter, Paul, and Mary, with ties to Greenwich Village, had selected one of Gary’s tunes “Samson and Delilah (If I Had My Way)” for their first Warner Brothers album Peter, Paul, and Mary (1962). 

To get his rights in order, Gary had to sign a contract with the Warner-associated publisher Harms-Whitmark, which decided to turn the signing into a media event. They invited reporters from all the trade papers, along with a handful of old-time songwriters on their roster.

CODA
Paul McCartney for one would understand exactly where Reverend Davis was coming from. The former Beatle woke up one morning with a fully formed song in his head. It was so good, he hawked it around to all his friends, asking what it was: “Do you know this? It’s a good little tune, but I couldn’t have written it because I dreamt it.”

​BBC Radio named “Yesterday” the best song of the 20th century.

1. Edward Allan Faine, Serendipity Doo-Dah: True Stories of Happy Musical Accidents, Book One (Takoma Park, MD: IM Press, 2017), 133–7.
2. Dave Van Ronk with Elijah Wald, The Mayor of MacDougal Street (Philadelphia, PA: Da Capo Press, 2013), 139.​​

​Photo credit: Adobe Stock / Yevhen
​

​At dinner one night in 1968, singer-songwriter Paul Anka heard his pal Frank Sinatra announce, “I’m getting out of the business. I’m sick of it. I’m getting the hell out.”

​Sinatra’s inestimable biographer James Kaplan continues the story:
​

​Meanwhile, across the pond in England, another singer-songwriter several years away from superstardom was putting songs together for his next album Hunky Dory. Ken Pitt, his manager at the time, asked young David Bowie to write English lyrics to—you guessed it—“Comme d’habitude” by Claude Francois and Jacques Revaux. 

Bowie did as he was told and he titled it “Even a Fool Learns to Love,” but he was stopped dead in his tracks when Paul Anka’s English-language version by Frank Sinatra hit the airwaves.

As Bowie’s drummer Woody Woodmansey later recalled:
​

​Bowie titled his version “Life on Mars” and it became side A, track 4, on Hunky Dory released in December 1971. Supported by the single “Changes”—the memorable “ch-ch-ch-changes”—the album sold reasonably well on its initial release, without being a major success. 

Six months later, after the commercial breakthrough of Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust persona, the Hunky Dory album became a hit, climbing to number three in the UK. 

Moreover, the belatedly released June 1973 “Life on Mars” single shot to number three on the UK chart and stayed there 13 weeks. No matter how the “Life on Mars” single was thought of at the time, both public and critical opinion today is through the proverbial rock ’n’ roll roof, with some critics placing the song on all-time top 100 great lists. 

Since it’s the Sinatra angle here that is of the most interest to me, one can only lament the missed opportunity by someone to have arranged a joint appearance of the two singers on a national TV show. Saturday Night Live? The Tonight Show? 

Ziggy Stardust could have sung “My Way” and Ol’ Blue Eyes “Life on Mars.” Now that would have been something.

1. James Kaplan, Sinatra: The Chairman (New York: Anchor Books, 2015), 779.
2. Woody Woodmansey with Joel Mciver, Spider from Mars: My Life With Bowie (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2017), 101–102. ​

​Photo credits: Frank Sinatra, 1957, Capitol Records; David Bowie, 1974, ABC Television.

​On the basis of the John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman album (Impulse!, 1963), music historian Will Friedwald concluded:
​

In Serendipity Doo-Dah Book One, I discussed how the “My One and Only Love” track from the above album came about as an accidental lapse by Hartman on the first run-through. The singer was so transfixed by Coltrane’s tenor sax solo that he completely forgot to come back in for his vocal at the close of the recording, which necessitated a do-over, resulting in the classic performance now known by everyone.[2]

​Another happy accident took place on that date as well. On the ride out from Manhattan to Rudy Van Gelder’s studios in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, to record the six planned selections, the driver turned the car radio on, and there was the voice of Nat King Cole singing Billy Strayhorn’s “Lush Life.” 

Upon hearing the song, Hartman exclaimed, “Man! This is one of the great tunes of all time.”

Coltrane responded, “Do you know it?”

He did. 

“Lush Life” was the second tune recorded that day, and not surprisingly, it was a classic, an archetypical reading that used the Cole version as a template in terms of tempo and overall format.[3]

John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman became the one recording that exposed the most people to Strayhorn’s lovely song, all because the car radio was tuned to the right station.

CODA
Coltrane certainly knew “Lush Life”—he had recorded an instrumental version for Prestige in January, 1958, released on his album Lush Life three years later.
​

1. Will Frieidwald, The Great Jazz and Pop Vocal Albums (New York: Pantheon Books, 2017), 163.
2. Edward Allan Faine, Serendipity Doo-Dah: True Stories of Happy Musical Accidents (Takoma Park, MD: IM Press, 2017), 75–6.
3. Will Friedwald, The Great Albums, 166–7.

​​

1958 CLASSIC RECORD ALBUMS 

​