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That Sound Beat sound….

It’s bittersweet getting to the end of every Sound Beat episode. Bitter because our time together is nearly over, but made so sweet by that Sound Beat Theme. We’re beyond fortunate to have had David Wolfert compose the piece for us.

David is a Grammy and Emmy nominated composer, arranger, songwriter, orchestrator, producer and instrumentalist who has worked in all areas of music, including film, records, advertising and television.

Here’s the complete theme. We get to use about ten seconds of it, and as you read a bit more about this man’s career below, you might see why editing the piece was a bit nervewracking.

David’s songs have been recorded by Whitney Houston (“I Believe in You and Me”), Barbra Streisand, Kelly Clarkson, Jennifer Hudson, Usher, Dolly Parton, Dusty Springfield, Eddie Murphy, the Four Tops, Cher, Julio Iglesias Jr. and many others, and appear on the Greatest Hits collections of Whitney Houston, Barbra Streisand, and Dolly Parton.   His song, “Stand Up” was recently used by the United  Nations Millenium project as the centerpiece of an event that rallied over 173 million people all over the world to demand that their leaders live up to 12 basic goals set by the UN. David has also worked as an arranger. producer and guitarist with many icons of the music business, including Rod Stewart, Bette Midler, Whitney Houston, Elton John, Peter Criss, Jimmy Cliff. Johnny Cash, Harry Nilsson, The Temptations, Aretha Franklin, Judy Collins, Brenda Russel, Don Covay, Dr. John and many others.(for a more complete listing, please go to allmusicguide.com.)

Some of David’s recent film scores include ” True Bromance (2012), “Smash His Camera,” a 2010 Sundance Selection, “Dale” (Paramount/CMT) one of the  biggest selling sports-themed DVDs of all time, “Montana Meth (HBO) “The Ride of Their Lives,” Petty Blue (2010 Release) and “Together” (Nascar Media Group).

David’s recent television work includes the theme music for The Katie Couric Show (ABC),  Fuse News (Fuse), Poker After Dark and Heads Up Poker, both on NBC.  He wrote the theme for ‘Pokémon,’ currently airing on  the Cartoon Network and in 70 countries, and the theme for Extreme Trains, on the History channel  His catalog also includes music for NFL Football, Nascar, The Martha Stewart Show, Bringing Home Baby, Nascar 360 and the logo music for MSNBC, Procter and Gamble Productions and New  Line Television.  He created the theme and additional scoring for NBC’s ‘The Chris Matthews Show,’ the theme for ‘Professional Bull Riders’ and ‘Notre Dame Football’ on NBC Sports, music for the highly acclaimed PBS program ‘Egg the Arts Show,’ the theme and library for ‘Flashpoints,’ Bryant Gumbel’s show on PBS .  He has composed many promos for NBC Nightly News, Showtime, and the Discovery Channel. He has also written the theme for the Nickelodeon series, ‘The Animorphs’ and scored the ‘Upfront’ presentations for the Discovery Channel and for NBC Networks.

David has also written music for well over a thousand Television and Radio commercials, for virtually every major advertiser. And he’s won more Clio Awards (2) than Don Draper (1).

He is the Composer/Music Director for Goodpenny, a creative boutique came up of equal parts editorial, visual effects and musical talent, and serves on the Advisory board of Songs of Love, a charity that composes personalized songs for chronically and terminally ill children.

David lives in New York and has studios in New York City and Bridgehampton, Long Island.

 

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The Real Thoroughbred Races of 1948

By Patrick Williams

It was a big year for the Kentucky Derby, and for thoroughbread racing in general, but it wasn’t because of the triumph of Feetlebaum in Spike Jones’s 1948 William Tell Overture.

That year, Citation, ridden by Eddie Arcaro and bred by Calumet Farm, won not only the Kentucky Derby, but also the Preakness Stakes and the Belmont Stakes consecutively.

Visit ESPNClassic to read more about that exciting 1948 Derby race.

Citation was the eighth of only eleven Triple Crown winners to date, and the fourth horse in the 1940s to reach all three Winner’s Circles in a single year. Affirmed was the last horese to take the honor nearly 35 years ago, on June 10th, 1978.

Incidentally, music plays a big part in each of the Triple Crown events; fans sing along to a unique tune before the stakes race at each park.

At the Kentucky Derby, we hear “My Old Kentucky Home,” the official state song of Kentucky.

At the Preakness Stakes, we hear “Maryland, My Maryland”, the official state song of Maryland.

And at the Belmont Stakes, well, that’s a little more complicated. Up until 1997, it was the 1894 James Blake & Charles Lawler-penned tune, “The Sidewalks of New York.”

From 1997 on, we have heard the familiar “Theme from New York, New York,” except in 2010, when crowds were treated to a deviation from that tradition in the form of Alicia Keyes’s hit “Empire State of Mind,” by Jasmine Villegas. Many fans were not pleased.

Will any of this year’s horses have a shot at the Triple Crown? We need only wait until the Preakness Stakes on May 18th so see if Saturday’s Derby winner joins 2012’s I’ll Have Another among the 22 “Double Crown” winners.

 

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Baum’s Fairylogue and Radio-Plays, 1908

Written by Mason Vander Lugt, Syracuse University catalog librarian and proprietor of  the historical music blog Dinosaur Discs.

After experimenting with Irish comic-dramas on stage between 1891 and 1895, and his successful theatrical production of The Wizard of Oz in 1902, L. Frank Baum took the Oz franchise in a wonderful (if ill-fated) direction with the “Fairylogue and Radio-Plays” in 1908.

Baum's Fairylogue and Radio-Plays, 1908 - lfbaum 8219
The cast of the "Fairylogue and Radio-Plays"

Leveraging the current taste for the exotic, Baum named the first part a “Fairylogue” after the increasingly popular “Travelogue”. The Chicago Tribune described it as follows –

A fairylogue is a travelogue that takes you to Oz instead of China… A radio play is a fairylogue with an orchestra on the left-hand side of the stage

If you’re familiar with media history, you may wonder why Baum would put on a “radio play” more than a decade before consumer radios began to sell in the United States. Baum called the multi-media theatrical production a “radio play” to invoke the energy behind the developing technology despite a complete absence of any radio-broadcast technologies. He later justified the name by stating that the process used to color the glass photo-slides was invented by a Parisian named Michel Radio, though there’s no further evidence of this person having existed (the slides were actually colored by the Duval Frères company.

Even if he didn’t have the terms quite correct, Baum was certainly ambitious in his use of developing technologies to present a fantastic experience to his viewers. At the beginning of the show, the author would walk on stage in a “lily-white suit” to introduce the characters, then walk off to one of the wings, hiding behind a velvet curtain, while he was replaced by a film projection of himself, in the same suit, among the characters and scenes of Oz. He would remain onstage to narrate the events, as sound-films were not yet available.

The first act of the show combined scenes from the first Oz books, and the second continued into scenes from John Dough and the Cherub. It combined motion picture, painted backdrops, ‘magic lantern’ style hand-colored slide projections, live orchestra, special effects, and, of course, live narration by the author. It was a spectacle. Audiences loved it.

Admission, however, averaged $3 – twelve times to cost of the average theater ticket at the time. Commercially, the Fairylogue and Radio-Plays were a disaster. Baum had personally funded the project, and convinced the owner of the Selig Polyscope film company of Chicago to produce the film segments under a promise of later payment. The production only lasted three months, and most of the nationally-scheduled dates were cancelled because of the high overhead costs. Baum’s biographer called the Fairylogues a “significant contributing factor” to his bankruptcy claims three years later.

This was only an inconvenience to the determined author. In 1913, he opened “The Tik-Tok Man of Oz”, with music by Louis Gottschalk, at Geo. M. Cohan’s Grand Opera House in Chicago.

Baum's Fairylogue and Radio-Plays, 1908 - TIk Tok Poster

This post was assembled from notes held in the L. Frank Baum papers at the Special Collections Research Center of the Syracuse University Library. The collection holds biographical information of the Baum and Gage families, typescripts of his written works, correspondence between Baum and his publisher, playbills, photographs, memorabilia and more. If you have any research interest in Baum’s life or work, please contact the Research Center.