Archives for February 22, 2012

These are the working titles of the thirteen chapters of Mood Indigo: A Life of Duke Ellington. (I say “working” because even though I no longer expect to change them, you never know.) As was the case with the chapter titles of Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong, they are all phrases that were spoken by Ellington at one time or another in his life:
• “I want to tell America”
• “I just couldn’t be shackled”
• “Soft and gut-bucket”
• “My ear makes my decision”
• “A higher plateau”
• “The way the president travels”
• “The eyes in the back of my head”
• “The sea of expectancy”
• “We didn’t believe in categories”
• “More a business than an art”
• “I was born in 1956”
• “Fate’s being kind to me”
• “That big yawning void”
I think they make a rather nice little poem, don’t you?

Kenneth Tynan interviews Laurence Olivier in 1966:

(This is the latest in a series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Monday and Wednesday.)

“Honors go to those who want them.”
Michael Oakeshott (quoted in Paul Franco, Michael Oakeshott: An Introduction, courtesy of Tim Hulsey)