Left (from left to right): Dave Brubeck, Eugene Wright, Ronald Reagan, Mikhail Gorbachev in 1988 (credit: Dave Brubeck); right: Dave Brubeck Quartet Take the “A” Train album, 1962.

You could just see and feel that nobody was talking to anybody. [Officials] made the obligatory speeches and Dave was introduced. Then, it was like out of a Hollywood B-movie. All of a sudden, everyone just came alive. Dave started in and the first tune he played was “Take the ‘A’ Train.” It brought down the house. People were up and cheering. I’ll never forget [Senator] Bob Dole—he looked like a little kid. He had his one good hand raised above his head like he was at a football game. He’d turn around, and there was a Soviet general, loaded with medals, doing the same thing. They looked at each other like, “You like Brubeck? I like Brubeck! We like Brubeck!” It went like that for twenty minutes. Dave played the greatest single twenty-minute set of his life.
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Right after the performance was over, Dave and I were rushed over to the hotel where all the international television people had set up shop . . . When Dave walked through, all these hardened old-hands came out and applauded as he headed for CNN. Bernard Shaw . . . asked Dave a few questions about his reaction to the situation. Dave said it was the most incredible moment in his life. Shaw turned to Dave and said, “I have to tell you, on the part of everyone here that watched you, there was not a dry eye among us when you started playing “ ’A’ Train.” We realized we couldn’t have had any greater ambassador from the United States than you.”
The next day, at the Bolshoi, [Secretary of State] George Schultz . . . comes over, and hugs Dave and says, “Dave, you helped make the summit. And today everyone on both sides was talking about it. They found common ground. You broke the ice.”[1]

The Kinks in Stockholm during a Swedish tour. September 2, 1965. Credit: Wikipedia

​​One day [in 1963] I saw this little green amp, like two doors down from where we lived. And [I bought it]. I had an argument with my girlfriend that day, and I was in a fit of rage and thought this amp didn’t sound right. So I got a razor blade. I slashed the cone speaker, and not knowing what I was doing at the time, didn’t even expect it to work. But I plugged it in and played and it sounded like a dog barking and I love it. We all grew to really love it and wrote this unusual kind of jazzy riff on the piano, which became “You Really Got Me,” and I started blasting it out through my little green amp. It seemed like everybody hated it when we were doing it, but when the record became No. 1 [in September 1964], everyone said: “Told you so.”[2]
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The Kinks on the TV program Fanclub in 1967. Credit: W. Veenmanderivative, Wikipedia.

​At the suggestion of [image consultant] Hal Carter, [Ray Davies] changed the initial address to the song, originally, he sang simply, “Yeah, you really got me,” but Carter urged him to toss in a girl’s name, any girl’s name, to address it personally to the listener. So Ray changed the lyric to “Girl, you really got me going”—changing the song from a vague fantasy to one of direct address.[3]

Dustin Hoffman (1968), Midnight Cowboy (1969), Jon Voight (1993). Credit: Wikipedia.

The director [John Schlesinger] was an insecure taskmaster whose most recent movie had bombed. The producer [Jerome Hellmann] was a lifelong depressive whose last film had also flopped. The screenwriter [Waldo Salt] was a self-destructive alcoholic, the two lead actors [Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman] relatively untested newcomers. Collectively, they were making a movie based on a bleak novel that had sold poorly and was ignored by critics. That was the most improbable genesis of Midnight Cowboy, the 1969 classic of two outcasts who find heartbreak and hope in the kaleidoscope jungle of New York City. [Improbably,] the film would win the Academy Award for Best Picture and the adoration of legions of fans.[2]
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Harry Nilsson in 1974. Credit: Wikipedia

​"The version commences with a modal, post-Coltrane intro as the saxophonist explores tones and space before the drummer Harland checks into its groove, one that touches on the blues, folk music, a pop-style chorus and gospel before moving off to explore Eastern modalities, post-bop, and (some) dissonances before circling back to its lovely melody."

 “He just melted into it . . . He took responsibility (like a conductor) he beat off the group and everything, he did his own thing, and the band played great for him . . .  [Alto/flute] player Jerry Dodgion elaborated: the informal format also encouraged Sinatra to vary both the program and the arrangements themselves . . . He could be different every night which is more in keeping with a jazz group.”
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