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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Archives for September 16, 2004

TT: I will blog no more, forever

September 16, 2004 by Terry Teachout

At least not until Friday, anyway. Yes, I know, I said on Tuesday that I was probably going to take Wednesday off, and look what happened! On the other hand, “About Last Night” racked up an exceptionally high number of page views yesterday–about 8,300, one of our best days ever–so I didn’t feel I could shut the shop down with a clear conscience.


Today, alas, is different: I really, truly have to finish writing an essay about A.J. Liebling, so I ain’t gonna blog no more. Until tomorrow. No matter what happens. I swear.


Really.


UPDATE: The Liebling piece is done and gone. One quick nap coming up.

TT: Lost and found

September 16, 2004 by Terry Teachout

I made a special guest appearance on the Leisure & Arts page of this morning’s Wall Street Journal to write about Madeleine Peyroux:

Eight years ago, Madeleine Peyroux was a star on the rise. “Dreamland,” her debut album, was selling nicely (200,000 copies, all told). Critics were fascinated by the idea of a singer-guitarist from Brooklyn who’d learned her trade from the street musicians of Paris, where she lived as a girl. Though she sounded very much like Billie Holiday in the late Forties–the same salty rasp, the same squeezed-out spurts and swoops–her music, a torchy blend of blues, country and old-time pop, bore no resemblance to the middle-aged Holiday’s languorous brand of jazz. Ms. Peyroux (prounounced pe-RU, like the country) first caught my ear, for instance, with a lazy, loping cover version of Patsy Cline’s “Walkin’ After Midnight,” a staple of broken-bottle honky-tonks the world over.


So what did she do for an encore? She disappeared.


Not only did Ms. Peyroux fail to follow up “Dreamland” with a sequel, but she did virtually no performing in public between 1997 and 2002. No one seemed to know what had happened to her, though I found vague hints scattered around the Internet….


Then–just as abruptly and inexplicably–Ms. Peyroux resurfaced. Rounder, the highly regarded independent country-bluegrass-jazz label, announced earlier this year that it had signed her to a recording contract. In June she opened for Gary Burton at the Blue Note, one of New York’s top jazz clubs. “Careless Love,” her long-awaited second album, was released this week, and on Monday she kicks off a week-long run at another high-end Manhattan nightspot, Le Jazz Au Bar.


All this would mean little were it not for the fact that “Careless Love” is a stunner, a laid-back, quietly sexy stroll through a dozen songs that appear to have nothing in common save that Ms. Peyroux, accompanied by a crack team of Los Angeles session men anchored by the peerless jazz organist Larry Goldings, sings each one as though it had been written for her personally….

No link, so if you want to read the whole thing, you have two options:


(1) Go to a newsstand and buy today’s Journal.


(2) Sign up for the online edition of The Wall Street Journal, which costs half as much as an ink-on-paper subscription and gives you complete access to each day’s edition, plus various other bells, whistles, and special features. Do this and you also get to read my drama column–starting tomorrow! If you’re interested, go here.


To purchase Careless Love (which I strongly recommend) or listen to samples thereof, go here.


Madeleine Peyroux’s Web site (which includes the itinerary for her upcoming concert tour) is here.


Le Jazz Au Bar’s Web site is here.


Now, get cracking.


UPDATE: Careless Love is now #4 on amazon.com, while www.madeleinepeyroux.com appears to have crashed, presumably from unexpectedly high traffic. Whoooee!

TT: Almanac

September 16, 2004 by Terry Teachout

“Sorrow comes in great waves–no one can know that better than you–but it rolls over us, and though it may almost smother us it leaves us on the spot, and we know that if it is strong we are stronger, inasmuch as it passes and we remain. It wears us, uses us, but we wear it and use it in return; and it is blind, whereas we after a manner see.”


Henry James, letter to Grace Norton, July 28, 1883

OGIC: Deadline sandwich

September 16, 2004 by Terry Teachout

Hello from a small and quickly vanishing window of breath-catching in between the ironclad deadline that I met today (barely, heroically) and the one that I’m going, I’m absolutely going, to meet tomorrow. It’s been one of those weeks. Things I blithely take for granted under normal circumstances, like sleep, social activity, cooked meals, the outdoors, and, yes, blogging, have through the magic of deprivation been revealed as tremendous gifts and blessings. In other words, I miss this old place.


After I slay this last dragon, you’ll be hearing from me on this, that, her, and quite possibly them, if I’m feeling self-indulgent (which I often am). This week may stink, you see, but last weekend was pretty excellent.

OGIC: A parodist is born

September 16, 2004 by Terry Teachout


Some people
mooch all the talent:

A dragonfly darted at my feet. I’d been looking forward to seeing one but once you were there in person it wasn’t all that great. Just a giant insect, really, with wings. Dragonflies are critically overhyped, the gilded Donald Trumps of the beach world.

The parodist is Ms. Tingle Alley. To find out who the parodied is, you’ll have to click through (first removing any sharp or heavy rings and bracelets so as not to injure yourself when you slap your forehead in delighted recognition).

Terry Teachout

Terry Teachout, who writes this blog, is the drama critic of The Wall Street Journal and the critic-at-large of Commentary. In addition to his Wall Street Journal drama column and his monthly essays … [Read More...]

About

About “About Last Night”

This is a blog about the arts in New York City and the rest of America, written by Terry Teachout. Terry is a critic, biographer, playwright, director, librettist, recovering musician, and inveterate blogger. In addition to theater, he writes here and elsewhere about all of the other arts--books, … [Read More...]

About My Plays and Opera Libretti

Billy and Me, my second play, received its world premiere on December 8, 2017, at Palm Beach Dramaworks in West Palm Beach, Fla. Satchmo at the Waldorf, my first play, closed off Broadway at the Westside Theatre on June 29, 2014, after 18 previews and 136 performances. That production was directed … [Read More...]

About My Podcast

Peter Marks, Elisabeth Vincentelli, and I are the panelists on “Three on the Aisle,” a bimonthly podcast from New York about theater in America. … [Read More...]

About My Books

My latest book is Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington, published in 2013 by Gotham Books in the U.S. and the Robson Press in England and now available in paperback. I have also written biographies of Louis Armstrong, George Balanchine, and H.L. Mencken, as well as a volume of my collected essays called A … [Read More...]

The Long Goodbye

To read all three installments of "The Long Goodbye," a multi-part posting about the experience of watching a parent die, go here. … [Read More...]

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